Stonecoil Serpent: With Trample, Reach and Protection from Multicolored, this card is probably the most flexible card in the whole deck, due to the ability to cast it on any turn. This guy can trigger evolves pretty well, and completely dunks on Niv to Light decks. The only downside is that he doesn't mesh well with
Dromoka's Command
Experiment One /
Pelt Collector: These guys are the evolvers. They’re most effective as a turn 1 drop into a turn 2
Conclave Mentor or
Winding Constrictor, and they have very solid secondary abilities as well in regeneration or trample, given that they have enough counters. However, in this deck, its kinda hard to get a second evolve trigger unless you use a large
Stonecoil Serpent.
Conclave Mentor: Not much needs to be said here. Boosts all +1/+1 counters, and has the added bonus of giving you some life when it dies, which is pretty useful against aggro decks.
Scavenging Ooze: A little mainboard graveyard hate never hurts! Especially when everyone’s favorite card seems to be
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger (I don’t blame ‘em, its a badass card), Scooze can be really useful.
Winding Constrictor: Same as
Conclave Mentor, except with a downside against the few cards that use -1/-1 counters and poison counters. I don’t think this will be a problem until I meet a deck that runs
The Scorpion God. Still a good card though.
Avatar of the Resolute: I’m a bit of a sucker for this card. Actually, I’m a bit of a sucker for cards that get huge from +1/+1 counters in general, but Avatar can end up being a HUGE creature for only 2 mana, but your board state has to be pretty good. Fortunately, I’ve shifted this deck to be more aggressive, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you’re faster than the opponent, but you may wanna sideboard this guy out against Burn.
Luminarch Aspirant: Our best way of distributing counters among our creatures. This creature can help you play the long game if it comes down to it and will usually force your opponent to try to remove it.
NEW CARDS
Huatli's Raptor: I've been considering this card for a while, it seems like its really good at distributing counters, and it can trigger evolve, but it's only good if your current board state is good.
Cards I’ve Cut, but saving the description in case I bring them back
Rishkar, Peema Renegade: Rishkar is amazing at distributing counters. Even though its only two, you’ll generally only have 2 or 3 creatures on the board by the time you cast him, so it doesn’t matter too much. Even his second ability comes in handy sometimes when you wanna cast something else from your hand but don’t have the mana. He can also trigger Evolves, if necessary, which is a plus.
Hangarback Walker: I guess this can be seen as a “replacement” for Ballista, but once you get a huge
Hangarback Walker, there’s not much the opponents can do. T1:
Hardened Scales T2:
Hangarback Walker is a pretty good start to a game, and if the opponent doesn’t immediately deal with it, you can run away with the game.
Voracious Hydra: This card not only has the ability to function as a removal creature, but also can get HUGE if you decide to double counters on him. The more “Scales” you have on the battlefield, the more effective the doubling is because
Hardened Scales will trigger when he enters the battlefield AND when the counters are doubled on him. He’s really good in almost every matchup, and I love it.
