Remember Overrun? That's what you do here, and very little else.
So the main two powerhouses are the Cultivator of Blades and Decimator of Provinces. You don't need both, but they do work amazing together since the Cultivator grants a huge power/toughness buff and the Decimator gives all of your guys Trample plus another small buff to ensure the win. Depending on how aggressive your opponent is, you should be able to survive until turns 7-9 and then absolutely explode on your opponent's faces. It can be done as early as turn 6, but I'll get to that. This deck really shines in Multiplayer because you should have less of an issue surviving into mid game, but then when the Cultivator is ready to attack it buffs ALL attackers, not just the ones you control. It's intense. I'll explain how all the buffs work at the end.
So, leading up to the big blowout you will be playing smaller creatures and building up energy. Pretty simple.
Attune with Aether gives two energy and ensures you hit your land drops every turn. Like in most decks, that's an important component.
Inventor's Goggles are another good option to drop on turn one since most of the creatures are Artificers and the bump to power and toughness helps keep them alive through the beginning turns as defenders. Eventually, you will move all copies on the battlefield to Cultivator of Blades to increase it's own survivability and add extra damage to the final attack.
Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter is a good turn 2 option along with Attune so that as quickly as turn 3 you can start creating Servos. In the end, the more creatures you have the more damage you will be doing and it grows at an alarming rate even if they are just 1/1's. If you miss Nissa or a Cultivator on turn 5 and don't have anything better to play, you can also start dropping Construct tokens that are a bit bigger and continue to get bigger each time you drop one.
Sage of Shaila's Claim grants 3 energy when played and makes a decent attacker early on to get some damage in, or save back to defend and take down an attacker with 2 toughness. One of few non-artificers in the deck, this is mainly for the energy since the Goggles won't auto-equip and make it a 3/3. Of course you could just pay to put them on, but who does that. If you can just hold it back until the final attack then it does make for another body and the body count makes all the difference.
Highspire Artisan
should always Fabricate the servo and take the Goggles to make it a 1/5 with Reach. This will stop most Flyers from hitting you in the face, and two bodies for 3 mana is solid value.
Architect of the Untamed
is where all that energy goes. Gaining energy with every land drop is nice, and pairs well with
Fabrication Module
. Every 8 energy you have creates a 6/6 Beast Token, and you don't even have to tap the Architect to create it. This means that if you actually have 16 energy you can create two at the same time. The neat part is that you can do this whether the Architect is tapped or not, and you can do it during combat on your opponent's turn to gain a nice big blocker or two.
Nissa, Vital Force protects herself with a 5/5 land creature until your next turn. The important part is that this thing has haste so you can use it to attack with the rest of your creatures when the blowout is prepared. Since she comes in with five loyalty and protects herself so well, you can use her -3 once you get set up with other defenders to bring back another permanent from the graveyard. Dead Sages for their energy is always a nice option, but the
Woodweaver's Puzzleknot
is probably the best choice since it's energy and life gain are easily repeatable for just 5 mana to play and sacrifice it every turn for 6 of each. That ought to keep you alive until you are ready to pounce. To cut the budget for the deck by more than half you can cut out Nissa in place of more copies of pretty much anything in the deck for consistency. The rest of the cards are pretty cheap to acquire on their own, so I didn't think it was too much to add. Another viable option that may just be better is Verdurous Gearhulk. It's the same CMC as Nissa, and instead of creating a 5/5 body he just is anything between a 4/4 and an 8/8 but can also just drop those counters onto the Cultivator. I like all 3 of Nissa's abilities so I find her a bit more flexible, but the idea being an all out smash fest maybe flexibility isn't what I should be concerned about.
Fabrication Module
builds up your team with +1/+1 counters every time you drop an Aether Hub, a Sage, Attune with Aether, or play a Puzzleknot. The best target for this is going to be the Cultivator of Blades, but really anybody can benefit from being bigger. I'd considered Decoction Module and Durable Handicraft to build up even more counters but unless you are mana flooded you should be spending almost all of your mana on most turns. You don't want to be waiting too long to strike either because your opponent could have a suitable defense or just kill you faster so I didn't think there was enough time to fuss around with too many counters. If only Hardened Scales were still a thing. That'd be gross.
Hunt the Weak
is there as a means of getting rid of important creatures on your opponent's board. The extra +1/+1 counter is nice, and should usually be put on the Cultivator just as before. The final push probably won't leave you with enough mana to do this and everything else, but you could do it in preparation the turn before. Testing will confirm if this is going to fit, and if it doesn't work out then Decoction Module would be next on the list to take those two spots.
Wildest Dreams can buy back your graveyard, or at least the important parts of it, for a decent price. This is mostly as a means of resetting if things go horribly wrong, but it is actually pretty nice on turn 5 or 7 to buy back 2-3 copies of Attune with Aether for the land drops and energy. The Puzzleknot is also a great option for energy and some life gain.
So this leaves the buffs from Blossoming Defense and Larger Than Life. In order for the Cultivator to maximize it's potency, you have to buff it up before you declare it an attacker. This leaves it vulnerable to targeted removal prior to combat so that nobody gets the buff. If you can cast Blossoming Defense then he gains Hexproof to stop this, and Larger than Life is safe to give another +4/+4. That's +6/+6 in total which means that all attacking creature get a minimum of +7/+7 each (yours and your partner's if you are playing THG). This is assuming you have no +1/+1 counters on him and he is not wearing artificer's goggles. Then, if you are able to Emerge a Decimator of Provinces all of your creatures get another +2/+2. If done before combat like it should be, the Decimator is a 7/7 with Haste and Trample that will receive the buff from the Cultivator, which as stated before would be at least +7/+7, but since the Cultivator got another +2/+2 from the Decimator, then he is giving everyone +9/+9 making the Decimator a 16/16 Trample and the Cultivator will be a 9/9 Trample. That's 25 damage just from those 2. Obviously you don't need more than that and the two of them could deal lethal on on their own by turn 9 as soon as you can afford doing all of those things (6 mana to Emerge from any 3 cost creature and 3 more mana for the buffs). Every single other creature, including those 1/1 Servos created by the Cultivator, will also be 10/10 Tramplers or bigger for maximum overkill.
Let's say on turn 1 you played Inventor's Goggles and turn 2 you played a Sage of Shaila's Claim.
Turn 3 you play
Architect of the Untamed
and turn 4 you play
Highspire Artisan
, creating a Servo and then
Attune with nature
to ensure another land drop.
Turn 5 you play Cultivator of Blades, attach the Goggles, and create 2 Servos. You also have 8 energy (3 from the Sage, 3 Architect land drops, and 2 from Attune) and can create a 6/6 Token.
Turn 6 you can Emerge the Decimator of Provinces from the
Highspire Artisan
(lowers cost by 3 and had the lowest power on the board) and give everyone +2/+2 and Trample. This gives your Cultivator 4 power total (1 base, 1 Goggles, 2 buff) so when everyone attacks they get an additional +4/+4 on top of the +2/+2 from the Decimator.
Your 3 Servo tokens are 7/7 Tramplers, the Architect is an 8/9 Trample, the Cultivator is a 4/4 Trample, the Construct token is a 12/12 Trample, and the Decimator is an 11/11 Trample for a total of 58 Trample damage on turn 6.
This is best case scenario, but it's a good scenario. The stupid part is that your opponent could just play something like
Commencement of Festivities
and stop you in your tracks. Lame. You are far more likely to turn out this kind of damage between turns 7 and 10, but since all you have to do is buff the hell out of the Cultivator then you can do this or more as early as turn 6. If you didn't have the Decimator and you even missed your land drop on turn 6, you still have 5 mana available to cast any combination of Larger Than Life and Blossoming Defense. The major difference here is that your creatures could actually be quite a lot larger, but none of them besides the Cultivator would have Trample (from Larger than Life) so you need to have more creatures than your opponent. The good news is that everything would pretty much need to be blocked or else they will die which should clear the board for your next attack.
The sideboard is pretty much targeted removal for artifacts, enchantments, land, and even flyers. A
Commencement of Festivities
during your opponents attack could be sweet instead of blocking and losing creatures. This also means they have less blockers, so if you can't Decimate their Province at least a lot of damage should still hit home.
And that's pretty much it. The Cultivator secured a third place finish at the prerelease last weekend. This was similar to my partners deck except it was Gruul and we had access to cards like Hijack and Built to Smash. It was a Two-Headed Giant event and our last match we were down to 4 life and they were up to 39. It didn't look good. I was playing a Black/White deck that I refined into Eliminate the Wandering Puppets and had several Servo tokens on the table that were intended to be chump blockers. He Hijacked one of their defending creatures and then buffed the Cultivator with Larger Than Life and we swung out for 58 damage. They were able to block exactly 19 of it by blocking the biggest creatures and we won hanging on by a thread. Everyone recounted the damage at least three times before calling it game, it was a very exciting way (for us) to end the night.
Let me know what you think in the comments about this mono-green powerhouse that takes me back to the days of Overrun. It's simple beat down magic that aims to end the game all in one power-packed punch. Victory sure is sweet.
