I started building this deck because I wanted to play stompy, but I wanted it to be more competitive and actually hold its ground against some stronger decks. I built the deck around efficiently-costed creatures with significant upsides, and can bash your opponent's face in any day of the week. The result was this very mean and resilient beatdown deck that's straight-forward but fun to pilot, and has fared very very well while play testing (it feasts upon decks like abzan as well as just about any control deck I've ran into, so theres that). If you came here and are wondering what the hell this deck is doing under the "Budget" hub, keep reading, I have a section explaining how to get this deck to be more budget friendly while somewhat maintaining its competitive edge. So without further ado lets go ahead and jump right into it.
CREATURES:
Experiment One- My favourite one-drop ever of all time, he certainly gets nasty as the game progresses, and that art just looks ridiculously cool. The evolve ability makes him great at keeping tempo as the game progresses, something that is very useful for a one-drop to have.
Noble Hierarch- Another great one-drop, A mana dork that produces both the colours we want, with exalted. Get him down on turn 1 and you're already off to a great start. While playtesting I've also had great success with Dryad Militant in this slot, while he doesn't speed up the deck, the flexibility of casting with white or green mana and an ability that keeps tarmogoyfs and snapcasters at bay is nothing to scoff at (seriously don't feed the Tarmogoyf).
Voice of Resurgence- one of the star players of the deck, this little deer friend eats control decks for breakfast and even removing him will usually result in big a threat your opponent will not want to deal with. This guy is extremely difficult for your opponent to trade 1-for-1 with. Not bad at all for a forest pony with sticks on his head. (When you're playing against a control deck, I heavily advise you to wait for your opponent to tap out before you play him. If you can resolve him, the rest of your cards might as well say "can't be countered" while he's on the field.)
Fleecemane Lion- efficiently costed, and his monstrous ability is great for later in the game. Another guy your opponent might waste removal on in fear of that monstrous ability coming in later.
Qasali Pridemage- I didn't think I would like this guy as much as I did, exalted is fantastic, allowing your Dryad Militant or Experiment One to punch in for 3 on turn 2. Not to mention that having the ability to remove enchantments right in your mainboard is always welcome.
Loxodon Smiter- 3 mana for a 4/4 beater is welcome any day. He can't be countered you say? I'll take that too, thank you. He can't be discarded either? Get over here my big mean elephant friend, I have the feeling we are going to be very, very good friends. This guy just takes a big steamy dump on Liliana of the Veil, her +1 when she comes in lets you cheat him in on their turn, and being a 4/4 he can effectively kill her the very next turn. Its just hard to get better value than this guy.
Wilt-Leaf Liege- Truly the team captain here. Synergizes extremely well with the rest of the deck, as even the tokens from Voice of Resurgence are green white, and the fact that he once again can'r be discarded means that whoever is playing any sort of discard heavy deck is going to be having a really bad day. The anthem effects also make it a lot easier to trigger experiment one's evolve.
NON-CREATURES:
Path to Exile- Some of the best removal in the modern format, needs no introduction. Almost always a 4-of if I'm running anything with white.
Vines of Vastwood- The most versatile pump spell, mostly because it doesn't just have to be a pump spell. Playing it for just one mana can save your creatures from removal, and even better, you can target your opponent's Deceiver Exarch to hard counter their twin combo. The reactions you get from doing that is always priceless. Thanks to this, as well as Path to Exile, Qasali Pridemage and Dromoka's Command I've found that our twin match up is pretty favourable, since we can quite reliably stop the combo, and our beaters are just simply better than their tempo/beat-down plan
Dromoka's Command- Welcome to Versatilitytown USA, letting you pick two out of all of these (quite useful) options is incredibly useful. The kind of card you look at and think "it does THAT too?" With all our meaty creature friends this is quite reliable removal, and provides some phenomenal and very welcome utility as well.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant- My personal favourite planeswalker, she can pretty well win games almost by herself. She can protect herself with tokens, and nothing says victory quite like hurling a 6/6 elephant with +3/+3 and flying right at your opponent's face. Her ultimate is pretty dope too, but I have yet to use it/need it as most of the time, jumping your beaters does quite the trick to finish that game off. Heavily considering finding a slot for a second Elspeth.
Windbrisk Heights- this deck doesn't really have a card draw outlet, so this is here to provide a bit of card advantage, as well as letting you cheat in something like your Wilt-Leaf Liege for 2 mana and at instant speed, not a bad deal if you ask me.
Gavony Township- Essentially our curve-topper coming in as a land, once you've played your creatures, you're gonna be wanting to activate this just about every turn making your whole team bigger and bigger with each swing.
Horizon Canopy- really a fantastic land, gives us the colours we need with a little bit of pain, but more importantly, lets us cycle it and draw a card once we have enough mana not to need it.
SIDEBOARD:
Sideboard is entirely dependent on your meta, so adjust it to suit your needs. I have built this sideboard that can deal with a large variety of decks out there, and I've found it to be quite useful, but feel free to suggest anything I could add. (I know Rest in Peace is better than Relic of Progenitus, but seeing that I already had the relics and they do the job well enough, I'm in no hurry to change them.). Detailed description of why I use what I do in the sideboard coming soon.
UPGRADING THE DECK:
There are always going to be possible upgrades and many routes to go about it. The clearest route I see would be to make the following changes:
-3 Dryad Militant -1 Experiment One, + 4 Noble Hierarch, -4 Fleecemane Lion + 4 Tarmogoyf
That being said, those upgrades would be quite a pretty penny on top of the ammount I've already spent on the deck, and I'm not made of money, so maybe someday, just not today. Any upgrade suggestions are welcome.
BUDGETIZING THE DECK:
I also realize not everyone can/wants to throw that much money at what is essentially just a pile of 60 cardboard rectangles, so if I were to budgetize the deck while keeping most of its components, I would make the following changes:
Replace 4 Noble Hierarch with 4 Avacyn's Pilgrim. While not as good as his nobler, exalted brother, a mana dork is a mana dork and Avacyn's Pilgrim gets the job done. For a bit more cash you can add 4 Birds of Paradise which gives you better mana fixing, and dont underestimate that flying after a couple of rounds of Gavony Township.
Replace 4 Voice of Resurgence, add 2 more Qasali Pridemage and 2 Scavenging Ooze. While theyre nowhere near as effective as Voice of Resurgence, these creatures can hold their own quite well, and can be had at only a fraction of the price.
Replace 4 Fleecemane Lion, add 4
Watchwolf
. 99% of the time, both these guys are going to be doing the same exact thing, so swapping them out and saving yourself a little chunk of cash is a no brainer
Replace 3 Wilt-Leaf Liege with 3
Knight of New Alara
. Again, the knight is really nowhere near as good as the leige, since you dont get the tasty discard-proof fun, and having 2 toughness instead of 4 means that he can be Lightning Bolted. However they still both cost 4 mana and have the same exact effect on the rest of your creatures, so it is not a bad placeholder, budget option.
Replace 4 Path to Exile with either Condemn or Journey to Nowhere. Neither of these options are anywhere near as good as Paths, but they're also under a dollar whereas Path to Exile is sitting right around 10. Condemn is still efficient and instant speed, with the downside of giving your opponent life. (in fact, you could even do it to one of your own creatures if you're in a pinch for life gain. Not ideal, but it could work) Journey to Nowhere doesn't give them life but costs 2 mana.
Making all of these changes, along with replacing the fetchlands and shocklands with painlands and checklands can dramatically drop the price of the deck while keeping a good part of its fucntionality. This budget version of the deck can be found here and only costs around $50-60 to build.
So that's my deck, thank you for taking the time to read the unnecessarily long description. As always I'm open for suggestions, since theres always gonna be new things to learn about this expansive and wonderfully-thorough game we all love; so feel free to critique and suggest improvements, and +1 if you like it!
