Ranger's Guile is actually a good answer to those in green. Mending Touch is another card that is good vs board wipes such as Supreme Verdict

But they can only save one creature at a time. Golgari charm is superior to mendibg touch, but rangers guile does have merits. Hexproof is useless against non targeting spells, so simic charm is redundant

Generally I've found it best to just try to stay on the attack, and not worry too much about reactive spells - that's not what this type of deck is about. A couple of Golgari Charm s to safeguard against sweepers, sure, but don't bother with Ranger's Guile or Mending Touch - they're too situational, and you don't see them when you really need them. The slots could be much better utilised with something that could actually help kill your opponent.

Wow, thanks for the ideas everyone!

CanadianSamurai Fade into Antiquity is good against Gods, but honestly they haven't given me too much trouble so far.. my creatures still get through, and Golgari Charm is there to remove any other pesky enchantments. Plus Windstorm is great for Stormbreath Dragon , Nightveil Specter and Heroic decks running Cavalry Pegasus .

JXB Thanks! Giant Adephage is tempting, but as he doesn't run counters I'm not so sure.. He'd really make me want to splash white and Wake the Reflections and totally change my deck to fully utilise him tbh xD

GeoKinetic I've been considering Burning-Tree Emissary for Kalonian Tusker actually, and as I have a huge amount of 2 drops, even if I can't pull off the insane combo you mentioned (which totally swung it btw haha) it's gonna be very useful for getting that little bit more ahead in terms of other mana-ramp creatures, have ordered 3 today :D Thanks for persuading me, I'm looking forward to trying them out!

eatme755 Answer to AEtherize is "oh well I still have my mana ramp creatures" and Cyclonic Rift would be irritating and slow me down, but it's not necessarily gonna lose me the game

Bromjunaar I prefer the Alpha Authority s I already have tbh, they're not instant speed, but they also help me get damage through things like token decks. Also found if you have a bunch of hexproof creatures control decks will just find another way to get through.. Like making you sacrifice stuff!

RebeccaRose, unfortunately Burning-Tree Emissary won't let you cast Kalonian Tusker as it provides RG upon ETB, while the Tusker requires GG - however, I do think you have enough other targets for the Emissary to make it worthwhile (not to mention it can be a great devotion enabler, especially if you can chain them). Good luck with it!

I meant "for" as in switching out aha, my bad!

Ah that makes a lot more sense!! Clearly I should have given you more credit ;)

Hehe :p

For anyone interested, just got back from my 2nd FNM.. Technically did the same as last week, although this time I was against some seriously hard match ups.

Game 1 I won 2:0, I did have endless "return to hand" cards being played at me and Riot Control s but got there in the end by just having lots of obscenely huge creatures (18/18 Reverent Hunter amongst others!). I also pulled off the Voyaging Satyr and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx combo suggested to me which I was super happy with! :D

Game 2 I lost 1:2, against a really good player. He was running boros, with a lot of early game damage through Ash Zealot s and beat me down with Fanatic of Mogis on both wins (if I remember rightly), but the games were close (running right upto time on the match on game 3) and siding in enchantment removal proved well against Legion's Initiative .

Game 3 I won 2:1, against a really good Izzet control deck. He won game 1, by removing/countering a lot of my creatures and then flying in with an insanely huge Spellheart Chimera . Game 2 was a pretty quick affair, my mana ramp worked really well and overwhelmed the board with big creatures. Hexproof won me the deciding game with Witchstalker owning up against burn spells and my Bow of Nylea slowly making them bigger and bigger.

Game 4 I lost 2:0, against a mono black devotion deck. Desecration Demon paired with Whip of Erebos had me sacrificing creatures all over the shop to stop huge damage and life-gain for him, managed to get in a fair amount of damage but then Gray Merchant of Asphodel came down and screwed up all my hard work. Pretty much went the same both times, although game 2 I would have won next turn had it not been for Gary, tried to bluff it by keeping a Forest in hand which he said he nearly used Thoughtseize on (would have then won as he wouldn't have the mana for Gary) but unfortunately he hedged his bets and won.

Overall am pleased with how I've done though, managed the same as last week and the people I played were all very good (a couple were top 8 out of 25+ people and most had been playing a lot longer than me). Only real problem was direct life damage via Fanatic and Gary! I'm hoping when my Burning-Tree Emissary s actually arrive though they'll up my speed and won't have to get into those late game situations as much!

Thinking about taking out Windstorm for Putrefy , and adding a couple more black mana sources. It's not as conditional on me having the correct amount of mana, and will easily deal with irritating creatures like Desecration Demon , Boros Reckoner or anything else slowing me down whilst building up devotion. Plus the only fliers I have seen in my local meta game have been one-ofs, that will also die to a Putrefy .

This deck certainly is quite insane. Those huge creatures can get out on the second or third turn.

The biggest problem I saw was that you have no way to get rid of an opponent's creatures. But that's not a real big problem since your creatures will be so big that they have to block them...

Also, you would get ripped apart by a flying deck. Currently you have one way to deal with flying in your entire deck, Arbor Colossus . However, you do have some cards in your sideboard to help you out :D

Thanks! Luckily there are literally like 4 fliers run in my meta, and Polukranos, World Eater can also deal with some of them when he goes monstrous, but yeah Windstorm is often sided in aha. Am thinking of going for Putrefy instead though as it's all out removal, against fliers and non fliers alike.

I would recommend splashing red instead of black as you were thinking of. Red would give you access to Domri Rade which gives you card advantage and lets you take out annoying flyers. Also you would be able to use scry lands which can help with your draws. Garruk, Caller of Beasts would work as well, and with ramp you can get him out early and drop a Arbor Colossus or Polukranos, World Eater . I would recommend adding another Polukranos, World Eater as well and more Arbor Colossus , maybe 2 more. I know you want to stick with counters but you won't really need counters when all your creatures are giant threats. Just something to think about.

The red splash is certainly something to consider, as Xenagos, The Reveler can provide some ridiculously fast starts as well, but if those cards are difficult to obtain then the way you're headed is totally fine, splashing black for a couple of Putrefy is perfectly reasonable.

Nice deck +100 from me. Don't think there is much to say about... But could you possibly look at my deck and give any suggestions to me?

I'd really like to splash red, but I just don't have the cards right now or the money unfortunately! It's definitely something I'll bear in mind though should the black splash not work well and when I've got some spare dough. Thanks for the ideas though :)

Thanks gotmilk@me I will try to have a look later :)

About to do an update now, after some more playtesting I've decided on a few edits.. Taking out my Elvish Mystic s which I know everyone won't agree with, but I've got my reasons and some (hopefully) better cards to put in their place.

Nice deck! I am building something similar. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/thar-gruul/

You seem to like the Putrefy but I think that it is not worth it. You have a swamp, guildgates and a shockland just to play 1 copy of Putrefy and 3x Golgari Charm from your sideboard. If you stick to mono-green you would be more consistent as a Guildgate in your opening hand is most likely slowing you down of a turn.

Garruk, Caller of Beasts would help you draw a lot of cards, if you can find yourself 1-2 copies.

Thanks! :)

Yeah at the moment it's not the most efficient mana-base, but I should be taking out the gates for Overgrown Tomb s before FNM this week provided I can trade for some! I wouldn't be too fussed with an opening hand guildgate, later on though they can be irritating xD

I really do need some Garruks in this deck, hoping I can either find someone to trade with me for them soon or have the money to buy a couple! All of his abilities just fit so well.

Just took out the one swamp actually, think it's a little bit overkill as I have the Sylvan Caryatid s producing black mana too and like you say Xenon I don't want to mess up the consistency too much, at least when I get tombs can pay 2 life to use them straight away and they provide green mana too :)

Hi there, I'm running a pretty similar deck to yours - there's a few differences and I'm wondering if maybe you could give me some feedback on mine? It seems like you've taken the deck to more FNMs than I have (Since I've built mine very recently)

And as Xenon mentioned before, in my experience with the deck, Garruk, Caller of Beasts help so much! Especially that mana is abundant. So I would double recommend.

As for the deck I'd love you to feedback: Counter Manipulation to the Max!

And +1 to yours of course :)

DodgeNDive sure I will give it a go!

I really am wishing I had some, even thinking I could put my 3 of Mistcutter Hydra into the sideboard (they won't work as well with Garruk having the X cost, and are really just anti-blue cards anyway), take out the mainboard Putrefy and run four Garruk, Caller of Beasts which would be insanely awesome, shame it's 80GBP for a playset :( I think I'll get saving or sell some of my unused rares xD

Thanks!

Yes, my thinking with Mistcutter is that they are sideboard against control matchups, same goes to the Witchstalker , Savage Summoning and the Golgari Charm which is for protection against board wipe.

I do have to admit, control match ups are more difficult for our kind of deck. I try to avoid losing the counters using Bioshift - but it's not looking like there's much space for it in your deck? Though maybe you could consider :)

I have a weird feeling I might sort of know you for some reason lol, does "Scythe and Teacup" mean anything to you?

Bioshift had crossed my mind before, it's a good idea for this sort of deck, but then I figure against those matchups I'm just better off siding in the cards you mentioned as I can't really find the room and I'm not always guaranteed my creatures will have counters on when they're bounced or die. (although against AEtherize it'd be a nice card to play.. boost all my other creatures and then play the bounced ones again with just as many counters next turn xD)

Afraid not, no! I googled it and somewhere in Liverpool came up, I live in Oxford so a bit far from there aha :)

I run a G/r devotion deck similar to this deck. As far as your elvish mystic quandary goes I've been toying with the idea of adding Deathrite Shaman so if I don't get him early at least he's still got some utility. also I would think about running more arbor colossus to give you more reach and devotion. When you ramp into him it's pretty easy to monsterous him and get those counters, he almost turns nylea on by himself and he gives reverent hunter 3 +1/+1s. I've dropped 10/10 hunters on turn 4 with colossus, mystic, caryatid, BTE, and nylea out.

Hey Becca, I ran into someone playing mono green splash blue the other day, he splashed blue for Prime Speaker Zegana , Cyclonic Rift .

His Rift overload is a win con, while Zegana nets him lots of card draws!It's pretty neat, just thought I'd pass on the trick so you could pull it off over in Oxford! :D

And yeah, Scythe and Teacup is a little gamer cafe in Liverpool I travel to sometimes, just thought someone was running this deck a few weeks ago in FNM aha