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The Brawl Project: Green And Green

Dayv Doberne continues his colorful theme with a pair of marvelous mono-green Brawl decks! Will you pledge fealty to Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig or make Syr Faren, the Hengehammer your champion?

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Hello everyone and welcome back to The Brawl Project! Last week I discussed The Royal Scions: Red and Blue Version, and with Pokemon Sword and Shield being released last Friday, I figured I’d continue with the homage to the franchise with this week’s installment. As many, many* of you pointed out last week, the original release of Pokemon in Japan wasn’t Red and Blue, but rather, Red and Green. Well, I hope you’re prepared for trouble because I’m about to make it double…

Introducing The Brawl Project: Green and Green!

Green and Green

* Nobody actually pointed this out. I just wanted to sound like I was popular.

There has been a lot of buzz about how green is eating up the rest of the color pie these days, and I have to say that green just kind of has it all right now. Now, it’s typical for green to have certain advantages, such as fast mana, large creatures, and artifact/enchantment destruction, but that’s far from where it ends. There’s trample of course; card draw related to creatures; vigilance, haste, and weird evasion; flash and reach; protection from counterspells; and even flying, if you work for it. Green also has one of the most busted planeswalkers we’ve seen in Standard in Nissa, Who Shakes the World. It even gets access to Cryptic Command!

Green Creatures and Emoji

So yeah, green is pretty good, and it doesn’t need help from other colors to compete. Nissa, Who Shakes the World makes for a great choice as a commander, enabling strategies that want a ton of mana, but today we’re going to look at a pair of creatures: Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig and Syr Faren, the Hengehammer.

But before we get to today’s decks, there’s a giveaway!

Let’s take a closer look at Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig.

Pros:

  • Is a big boi
  • Gets even bigger
  • Works well with proliferate
  • Inexpensive at three mana

Cons:

  • Only attacks and blocks
  • No enters-the-battlefield effect
  • No evasive abilities (trample) or protection (hexproof)

Yorvo’s strength lies in being large and getting larger with each subsequent creature, especially very large ones. However, given what we have available to us in green, most of the best cards are not actually the most expensive ones; our most efficient cards are midsized threats like Questing Beast, Nullhide Ferox, or Shifting Ceratops. There aren’t any Primeval Titans in the current format, and I’m not too interested in paying six mana for Aggressive Mammoth for it to be hit with Pacifism or Epic Downfall without getting value. That said, cards like Voracious Hydra and Nullhide Ferox have stats way above the curve, so trying to go bigger is somewhat pointless anyway.

Of course, being in green, we should take advantage of the mana creatures at our disposal. We’ll play all the tried-and-true good ones we play in most green decks (those that cost two or less). Arboreal Grazer allows us to cast the coveted Turn 2 Yorvo. Finally, District Guide is a nice addition to help smooth out our land drops.

Now that we have our favorite creatures picked out, let’s look for effects that benefit from our deck being predominantly creatures. The Great Henge draws a card for each creature we cast and is heavily discounted when we have a large creature like Yorvo out. Guardian Project and Beast Whisperer are similar effects of lesser potency. These three cards make it easy to keep the cards flowing, as we have 21 creatures in the deck to trigger them plus our commander!

Another way to draw a healthy amount of cards is Return of the Wildspeaker. With access to Yorvo at all times, this should be able to draw four cards consistently. It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario where this card can draw even more than that, as a few creature spells after Yorvo would do the trick. And when all else fails, it can give a substantial pump to the team to set up that alpha strike.

At first, I was skeptical of Thorn Mammoth because it costs seven mana and doesn’t do much against creatures that are 6/7 or bigger, but I’ve been really impressed by it in Brawl. It can frequently fight down an opposing creature, and if it sticks around the density of creatures in this deck allow it to keep burying the opponent in successful fights. Thorn Mammoth can be crippling ahead of curve but is usually pretty good when played late as well.

A few more odds and ends to mention. Ugin, the Ineffable does a really nice job of shoring up green’s lack of removal, as Ugin is usually at least a six-mana Vindicate. Prey Upon and other fight effects work well in this deck because Yorvo will likely be bigger than most creatures on the battlefield. Veil of Summer is a complete blank against some decks but is so good against countermagic and black removal that I think it’s worth the slot here. More so than the Syr Faren list below, this deck puts a lot of mana into threats that can be answered with a single counterspell or piece of removal, so having a protective measure can be handy.

Finally, this deck makes a fair number of +1/+1 and loyalty counters so having a proliferate on Karn’s Bastion can be nice. The Great Henge gives all future creatures a counter and Nissa, Who Shakes the World puts counters on lands every turn, so those two are great ways to get the proliferate engine going.

Here’s where I ended up with the deck:

Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig
Dayv Doberne
Test deck on 11-18-2019
Standard Brawl
Magic Arena

Creatures (21)

Planeswalkers (3)

Lands (3)

Spells (32)

Magic Card Back


Note: I’m not sure what happened to Paradise Druid. It’s one of the most powerful green cards in Brawl and should definitely be in here, though apparently I had recorded the deck tech without it. I’d switch it for the District Guide or the Veil of Summer.

Make Way for the Hengehammer!

Pros:

  • Very inexpensive at two mana
  • Wears buffs well
  • Awesome title

Cons:

  • Only attacks and blocks
  • No enters-the-battlefield effect
  • No evasive abilities (trample) or protection (hexproof)
  • Not very big on its own

I will freely admit, the first time I saw the Syr-Faren-plus-lots-of-one-drops-that-probably-should-never-be-included-in-a-Limited-or-Constructed-deck strategy, I thought I had an easy victory lined up, as I wasn’t about to lose to Frilled Sandwalla.

I lost to Frilled Sandwalla.

There is no subtlety here. This is the “Don’t laugh, it works” of the Brawl format. The gameplan is to cast a creature on Turn 1; cast Syr Faren, the Hengehammer on Turn 2; and then spend the rest of the game pumping Syr Faren and pushing damage through. This deck doesn’t do very many different things, but what it does, it does very well. Augmenting Syr Faren with a single +1/+1 counter can mean attacking for seven on Turn 3, and if left unchecked a precombat pump spell like Giant Growth or Insatiable Appetite can threaten a ton of damage.

The deck is particularly punishing for players who rely on countermagic as their main form of interaction, as most of the threats this deck plays are cheaper than most countermagic. Creatures can be established before countermagic can be held up, and while they might not be particularly good creatures, they still attack while your opponent passes with mana up.

A really nice card for this deck is Season of Growth. Since this deck plays so many instants and sorceries that target its own creatures, you can draw a surprising amount of cards with the enchantment. The deck passes up on The Great Henge because the creatures aren’t particularly large, but Guardian Project still gets the nod, especially with so many cheap creatures.

Just because we have a streamlined gameplan and are willing to play cards that are certified jank doesn’t mean we’re going to turn away “the good” green cards of the format. It’s really hard to pass up Questing Beast; Nissa, Who Shakes the World; and Voracious Hydra in just about any green deck.

There are a few more cards here that might not be commonplace in other green decks. Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter works well in this deck, not just to pump Syr Faren but also because the abundance of cheap creatures that can be pressed into service as mana creatures.

As we are playing a lot of cheap green creatures, Overcome and Heraldic Banner are nice effects that scale with the number of creatures on the battlefield. It’s worth noting that Syr Faren only checks its power with its triggered ability for Heraldic Banner. Overcome works very well with other pump spells because it gives Syr Faren trample, and also whatever creature is receiving the trigger.

While Syr Faren is a Human and unfortunately doesn’t benefit from Return of the Wildspeaker’s buff (that would be really nice to have here), there are plenty of creatures whose power would be doubled or more by the card.

Here’s the full list for the deck. Have fun blitzing your opponents!

Syr Faren, the Hengehammer
Dayv Doberne
Test deck on 11-18-2019
Standard Brawl
Magic Arena

Creatures (22)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (1)

Spells (34)

Magic Card Back


Before we wrap up for today I want to give a big shout out to Arena Brawl, a website dedicated to finding Brawl matches for players on Magic Arena when the queue isn’t available in-client (on days not named Wednesday). If you’re looking for a place to find Brawl opponents to direct challenge, they make it a very quick and painless process!

Thanks for reading The Brawl Project! I’ll be visiting my sister all week and thus there won’t be any streams, but we’ll be back to a normal schedule with Brawl streams Monday – Thursday at noon Pacific next week. We’ll be looking at a certain somebody who loves artifacts next time… who could it be?

A New Challenger Appears!

See you next week!