far//away does look nice- 5 mana for 2 creatures or play one of them earlier to maybe open the opponent up to an early attack.
both far//away and devour flesh are going to work better later in the game. say the oppenent doesnt draw his or her creature removal until your hydra gets up to 8, 16.. easily 50+ lol you could be gaining alot of health that you may have lost during this long game.
wich is why id only put a couple in the deck. its not something you want to draw in the first few turns if possible

Master Biomancer?

astroknotts, I actually just picked up 2 Far / Away on eBay for $1 to give them a shot. What can it hurt, right? Just have to figure out what the hell I'm going to take out. I don't think I should have both Devour Flesh and Far / Away in at the same time, and there isn't room on the sideboard...Devour seems too situational and Far/Away seems like it'll be more consistently used, and is more versatile.

@ Smaug1007, thanks for that suggestion! I tried them in the first iteration of this deck and really loved the concept. Unfortunately, for a 4 drop they just don't move the deck along fast enough. Not when Corpsejack Menace doubles the counters, guaranteed, for the same CMC and with a higher P/T. I actually traded 2 Master Biomancer away the other day and it made me sad :( My conclusion about Simic decks in general is that nearly every card that SEEMS good as far as synergy actually sucks. Bioshift , Cloudfin Raptor , Master Biomancer , Give / Take , Nimbus Swimmer , Plasm Capture , Fathom Mage , Vorel of the Hull Clade - that one hurts the most...tried/considered them all. They all got cut. Too slow for the current hyper-speed meta or don't end up doing what you think they will.

Oh, and let's not forget that the new Simic Planeswalker coming out in Born of the Gods is by all accounts not very good at best, and a piece of shit at worst, for a Planeswalker. Even the pros have written articles about how she won't be seeing standard play, most likely. Certainly has no spot in this deck, sadly. I pooped my pants a little when I saw it was GU until I actually read the card.

How is cloudfin raptor too slow?

It's not that Cloudfin Raptor is too slow in the traditional sense, since obviously his casting cost couldn't be lower. He is, however, too slow to evolve since you want your first turn to be an Elvish Mystic (which could Evolve him), not the Cloudfin. The next turn? You want that to be Sylvan Caryatid . Draw him almost any other time in the game? He's almost always a dead draw since you want to be either 1. playing other creatures 2. Drawing other creatures or removal rather than a 0/1 Flyer after turn 3-4. Topdecking a Cloudfin Raptor when you need a Kalonian Hydra loses games, since he doesn't do any good unless he's already on the battlefield before the big boys come in, and the lower end of the curve of this deck doesn't support it.

I feel u on cutting out all these cards that seem so fitting. I think far/away may be a better choice since it is more flexible. perhaps sideboard devour incase of an opponent with little to no creatures? It depends on what you expect them to play

Yeah man, Far / Away seems like a great choice for this deck and I need to wait for it to show up in the mail to test it out, but I'm running into another problem as I'm making these changes. Firstly, my sideboard is totally full and I'm feeling like there's obviously more that I want to add to it than I have room for (as I'm sure most people feel once they've extensively started playtesting a deck). But the thing that's bothering me more is that I have 2x of 5 different instants and I'm worried I'm spreading myself thin. Those are generally the first cards that get sideboarded out depending on the matchup, but have I undercommitted for the sake of variety and versatility to the point where I'm not effective at any one thing on the first matchup? I'm just thinking out loud here.

the deck is simply to slow to build up. no ramping no devotion....

Well, this isn't a devotion-style deck at all. As far as no ramp, can I ask what you mean? I have 4x Elvish Mystic and 4x Sylvan Caryatid . I'm not sure what other ramp would work in this deck.

it just looks like the nykthos shrine could use a little help with say burning-tree or something of that nature....