Simic Evolve has been a favorite strategy of mine ever since Evolve, Undying, and Rapid Hybridization have been around. I was using a modernized version of the old Standard list, but I found that during the late-game, I almost always ran out of gas. I was also putting all my eggs into an early aggro advantage, relying completely on the speed of the deck. After looking at some of the newer cards, I found that there was a strategy that I could add to the deck that wouldn't hinder our early game, but gives my late-game a lot more potential.
I added black. Creatures that can die multiple times often benefit from cards of this color. I added the formidable combination of Viscera Seer + Blood Artist + Zulaport Cutthroat. I've used this trio in many of my more recent decks, and it is a favorite strategy among my peers.
This deck can still get off to the very fast early game of Cloudfin Raptor/Experiment One + Young Wolf + Rapid Hybridization/Pongify. This will give me 8 power by the end of turn 2, which is a lot of pressure. It wins games, but if I don't draw this specific series of cards, the deck can have a hard time finishing what it starts. That's where the black comes in.
Imagine a late-game scenario where you can't seem to get the last points of damage through, and your opponent is starting to amass a large amount of creatures. The duo of cards that we can use to stabilize our defense is Zameck Guildmage + an Undying Creature. By removing the +1/+1 counter from our Undying creature, we allow it to die multiple times, giving us a blocker every turn, and it draws us a card. If Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat is on the field, along with Viscera Seer, then we leech a life from our opponent and can sacrifice the Undying creature, allowing us to scry the top of our deck. We can scry either before or after the draw ability resolves from Zameck Guildmage, so depending on what we know about the top of our deck, we can choose how this happens. This is another little thing that the deck does, but here's a longer series of triggers that we can use:
Enter a new creature that helps our strategy: Prized Amalgam.
This creature will help us evolve our creatures, it will help with early aggression, it will help with mid-late game defense if we are forced to back off, and he triggers off of Undying.
Imagine this scenario: Your opponent has three 4/4's that he's trying to beat your face in with. You have a Prized Amalgam, Young Wolf, Experiment One with two +1/+1 counters, and a Zameck Guildmage. Your opponent can't get through your defense, and you will have the creatures to block with every turn. Here's how:
You block a creature with the Prized Amalgam, Young Wolf, and Experiment One. You remove 2 counters from Experiment One to regenerate it, and then the Young Wolf and Prized Amalgam both die. After the Young Wolf and Prized Amalgam enter the graveyard, the Undying is triggered on Young Wolf, returning it to play with a +1/+1 counter on it, evolving the Experiment One, and it triggers Prized Amalgam. Then, at the end of the opponent's turn, the Prized Amalgam enters the battlefield tapped, evolving the Experiment One again, giving it the second +1/+1 counter it will need next turn to regenerate. Then, use Zameck Guildmage, removing the +1/+1 counter from Young Wolf so that it can use Undying again, and drawing us a card. The most beautiful part about all of this is that we only need 1 blue and 1 green mana, and it can all happen. Also, if we are forced to use Rapid Hybridization or Pongify on our opponent's creatures, we are now able to start killing off the 3/3 tokens that they gained.
I know that this may seem like Magic Christmasland, but if the game goes long, it won't be hard to have 4 permanents in play. We can then add some pieces to this in the form of Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat and Viscera Seer. Instead of just netting a card, we now net life leech from the opponent and scrying. Add multiples of either Blood Artist//Zulaport Cutthroat, and the clock starts ticking a lot faster for the opponent.
The deck can also curve out more naturally, starting with an Evolve creature, a turn-two Zameck Guildmage or Strangleroot Geist, and a turn-three Prized Amalgam. It is a very stable series of plays that will also put pressure on the opponent, but not at the same speed as the Simic combo that I mentioned earlier. However, if our opponent hasn't set up a decent defense yet, we have already attacked for 9 by the end of turn three. That's pretty good in my book. After that, depending on what we play, we can win multiple different ways.
There are a lot of synergies in this deck, and it now has a decent late-game strategy that we can switch gears to if we have to. A deck that can be explosive early, but also have reach late, is a deck that I think has a chance to turn some heads.
