I've made some last minute changes to the sideboard for FNM tonight. 4x Silkwrap 4x Surge of Righteousness 3x Tragic Arrogance 4x Valorous Stance. Nothing but high value removal.

It's hard to predict what people will be playing tonight with Game day tomorrow, the guys might want to practice their "easy" win decks, red deck wins and turbo mill. I stand a decent chance now against red aggro with 4x Silkwrap 4x Surge of Righteousness 4x Dromoka's Command, but that mill/fod deck, I don't think I can win that without Dragonlord Dromoka.

Maybe I should cut two Tragic Arrogance for Dragonlord Dromoka?? as I've never had much luck with Tragic Arrogance. It just seems like such a powerful card, but nobodies been playing weird unbalanced decks. The deck to beat from last week was a Temur mid range, I didn't see all his cards, He may have a set of Sagu Mauler's for all I know, in which case I need Tragic Arrogance. The Silkwrap's are mainly for him actually, because I know he has play sets of Savage Knuckleblade's and Heir of the Wilds

I wonder if anyone from my LCS reads this? No one does as far as I know, but I added the store to my profile some time ago. How popular is this site anyways?

4x Evolutionary Leap is a bit much. As a guy who also plays G/W Hardened Scales, the most successful amount of that card is 2 mainboard and 1 sideboard. Don't get me wrong its a great card but you only ever need one to hit the field and if it doesn't hit at all thats fine too. What is bad is when you already have one on the field and you draw another one creating a dead card in hand.

Dizxemnort Your right about 4x Evolutionary Leap being too many for most decks, but this deck is built around it. All this deck needs is creatures, almost any combination of three creatures wins the game. I don't think of a second Evolutionary Leap as a dead card, it's more like insurance, and so long as I have one in play I'm not likely to run out of cards to play. It's all about buying turns and card advantage.

It's also the style of this deck, and without that I may as well play whatever won the last protour.

PlagueRats you have good point and I do respect originality :P

Fantastic list! I have everything except the Wooded Foothills but would still like to give it a spin. What do you think about the following?

• -1 Abzan Falconer
• -2 Wooded Foothills
• -2 Forest
• +2 Plains
• +3 Elvish Visionary

I've a had good experiences with Elvish Visionary in evo decks, because you get to play a cycle creature that you can immediately recycle with Evolutionary Leap without giving it a second thought. Plus Elvish Visionary helps hit that pesky missing land, Evolutionary Leap, or Hardened Scales.

loosegauntlet, that sounds alright, but cutting lands is risky with Evolutionary Leap. There's also benefit to having every creature make counters.

I've found 23 lands to be too low, especially with aggressive amounts of fetches and wanting multiple plays per turn on turns 4/5.

[Feat of resistance] make ur opponent burn his removal uselessly while dropping an extra or two extra counters on the field

I took first place at my local FNM last night!

We started with 9 people, but two dropped early so it was only 3 rounds. I got the bye first round so I actually only got to play 2 matches, but I did beat the guy who usually wins every week. He was playing a sort of aggressive creature heavy Temur deck. A lot 3-5 power creatures, lots of haste. I couldn't really keep up, but I could stall the board until I had leathal damage and played an Abzan Falconer to fly over for the win. I sided in all the Valorous Stance and Silkwrap's.

Round two I had a fairly easy win against a jeskai deck. His removal seemed to all be damage based and I kept my creatures out of range and his counter spells missed my Silkwrap's. Avatar of the Resolute beat his Mantis Rider's. It helped too that I drew Hardened Scales both games.

I'm happy with the side board. I personal seem to have trouble when I give myself too many side board options. This is so simple now, just choose the right removal and done.

I don't think Evolutionary Leap is doing that much for you, on my playtests it was always an unnecessary draw, you could think about Dragonscale General.

PlagueRats How did Evo. Leap turn out for you? Did you get a chance to use it often?

If you just playtest a deck like this on it's own it's easy to make it seem much more reliable then it really is. This deck relies on many little combos that can be broken by well timed creature removal and combat tricks. It's common to empty your hand by turn 4-5. Sometimes that's great, you get such a big early advantage you can't lose. When this deck gets a lucky draw or when you're already winning Evolutionary Leap doesn't do much, but the trouble is that against smart opponents with solid decks, they will often be able to kill your first three or so biggest threats and leave you with a couple 1/1's if your lucky. Then what? this isn't some cheap red-deck wins, all or nothing aggro deck, you need a back up plan - Evolutionary Leap is mine.

The way I use Evolutionary Leap may not be obvious to everyone, I'm only sacrificing creatures re-actively, in response to their imminent removal or death. It requires switching gears to a more control style strategy. It is very hard for opponents to gain more then a temporary board advantage when they can't reduce the number of creatures you have.

syandell86 Last FNM I didn't use Evolutionary Leap much. The first match I won so quickly and hardly lost a creature. The second match the games went long enough for it, but I didn't draw it game 1 or 2. Game 2 I Mulligan'd to 6, kept a 5 land hand and continued to flood out forever. Game three we both just built up creatures on the board, I sac'd a Hydra that was pinned down by an enchantment and chump blocked and sac'd another. Actually, I wouldn't have won without drawing those two extra creatures.

PlagueRats odd question: how did you get your images in your description side by side?

After seeing your build i liked it's persentation but ended up with G/W Megascales?

Also PlagueRats TY for validating Evolutionary Leap... i have a hard time explaining to people why it works in certain variations of the Scales shell. :D Glad to see someone else putting value in the card.

Voxsair, I like your one Hooded Hydra. I've been thinking about doing the same thing in place of on Endless One. I ran 4 of them in an earlier version of this deck before Origins gave us Hangarback Walker.

I'll share the code I used to display images side by side later, I'm on my phone now and trying to copy big blocks of text is frustrating.

Voxsair, Here's the HTML code I used to place three images side by side and equally spaced. It displays perfectly on every device I use. I don't know of a good way to share HTML code in the comments?? You'll need to find and replace the 4 ? (question mark symbols) with < symbols.

?img src=" WEB LOCATION OF LEFT IMAGE GOES HERE " style="float: left; width: 33%; margin-right: .5%; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">?img src=" MIDDLE IMAGE LOCATION HERE " style="float: left; width: 33%; margin-right: .5%; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">?img src=" RIGHT IMAGE LOCATION HERE " style="float: right; width: 33%; margin-right: 0%; margin-bottom: 0.5em;">?p style="clear: both;">

PlagueRats TY! :D looks great now :P

+1 from me. I think this archetype can be very powerful and have been working on my own take. The control match has been my biggest struggle and I recently rebuilt by sideboard around Vryn Wingmare and Dragonlord Dromoka. I like your use of Evolutionary Leap however and it has given me a lot to think on. Mostly it makes me think that a playset of Hangarback Walker will be worth the investment at some point. If you have a minute to check out my build I am always looking for critiques.

Dromoka Green Aggro Playtest

Standard zombiewarfare

SCORE: 4 | 0 COMMENTS | 332 VIEWS

I think the consensus is 4x Hangarback Walker are a must.

if you're playing counters you need Hangarback Walker as a 4-of. it's one of your best creatures.

Why no Den Protector's? It's a wincon in the deck. Pump him up and make him virtually unblockable. Also it gets back your few noncreature spells barring any removal or hand disruption. Plus it gets a counter. You can literally, sac Servant of the Scale to Evolutionary Leap, put counters onto Den Protector, get a dude from your deck, flip Den Protector, get back Servant of the Scale, recast Servant of the Scale, sac him again to Leap, put the counters on Den P and swing big! If you have a Scales out, it gets even bigger and Den P can basically end the game in 2 swings PLUS you will have a restocked hand of creatures, ALL for just 5 mana!

I own four Den Protector's, played them in this deck a while ago. It was my favorite card for a while with cards like Gleam of Authority, but now, I don't think it's good enough here. I don't really need more card draw and it doesn't likely get big enough to attack through everything.

Have you considered Murder Investigation? It fits the theme really well and turns anything into a Hangarback (minus the flying on the tokens).

Also, 1 Swamp with some way to fetch it (probably just Evolving Wilds) is a neat way to fuel Bone Splinters if you want to force the issue on spawning tokens from one of your creatures as a way to just overrun the field.

Murder Investigation when compared to Hangarback Walker is very inefficient. You are spending whatever the CMC of the creature and then another 2 mana on Murder Investigation to get an outcome that is not as good as if you had just played a Hangarback.

Also, adding a swamp for a card like Bone Splinters doesn't make sense. Would that make this deck so much better? I don't think so. In order to warrant splashing for a specific card, that card has to make your deck a lot better, which, IMO, Bone Splinters does not. I think you would, most of the time, end up with a dead card in your hand and a sorcery speed one at that.