Much Abrew: Mono-Green Evolution (Historic)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Out of all the new cards added to Historic by Jumpstart, Branching Evolution has the potential to be one of the most powerful, giving us the +1/+1 counter aspect of Doubling Season by doubling up all of the counters put on our creatures but at three mana rather than five! Today's deck—Mono-Green Evolution—is designed to see just how big we can make our creatures, with the help of Branching Evolution. Almost every card in our deck puts +1/+1 counters on our creatures in one way or another, which means things can get insane pretty quickly if we can stick a Branching Evolution or two, with our random cheap creatures suddenly having 20 or even 40 power! How good is Branching Evolution in Historic? Which creatures work best with the enchantment? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Much Abrew: Mono-Green Evolution
Discussion
- All in all, we finished 3-2 with Mono-Green Evolution, not including a game against a really slow Temur Reclamation player where I ended up scooping after the opponent roped in game one, burning through all of their timeouts, only to cast an obviously lethal Expansion // Explosion just as they were about to run out of time, which would technically drop our record to 3-3. We also came absurdly close to winning our last match against Golos Field, even through an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, which would have made our record even better.
- In general, the deck felt powerful, especially against the fair-ish decks of Historic. Other creature-based decks are almost laughably easy matchups because our creatures get incredibly big incredibly quickly once we get Branching Evolution on the battlefield. We had some games with two Branching Evolutions on the battlefield where we'd cast something like Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig for just three mana and have it be a 24/24 in the same turn. At one point, we even had a Wildwood Scourge that had almost 50 +1/+1 counters on it!
- On the other hand, our deck can struggle against the unfair decks of Historic, like Temur Rec and Goblins, which can combo off quickly enough that they don't really care about our massive creatures. While we can beat either deck if they have a slow-ish draw (or with the help of our sideboard cards), in general, these matchups are hard for our deck.
- The deck's plan is really, really simple: we play Branching Evolution; then, we play a ton of creatures that get +1/+1 counters. Those creatures become huge, and we smash our opponent to death with massive Voracious Hydras, Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrigs, and Wildwood Scourges (among others).
- Perhaps the two most important non–Branching Evolution cards in our deck are Vivien, Arkbow Ranger and Gemrazer, both of which can give our biggest creature trample. While Voracious Hydra and Stonecoil Serpent naturally have trample, the rest of our big +1/+1 counters creatures don't, which means our opponent can chump block them with random dorks. Vivien, Arkbow Ranger is the better of the two since it also adds +1/+1 counters to our creatures, although Gemrazer does have the upside of blowing up artifacts and enchantments like Wilderness Reclamation.
- So, should you play Mono-Green Evolution in Historic? If you like making massive creatures, I think the answer is yes. I can't think of any other deck in the format that can make creatures as big as Mono-Green Evolution can. It's surprisingly easy to end up in a position where we are playing three-mana 8/8s and four-mana 16/16s, which grow even bigger as the game goes along. While the deck is good enough to win a reasonable amount of the time, even at Mythic, the downside is that our two hardest matchups—Goblins and Reclamation—are also the two most popular decks in the format. This probably means that Mono-Green Evolution isn't truly a competitive option, but it is great at beating up on the other decks in the format, which means you'll still pick up a lot of wins, even if they won't usually come against Reclamation and Goblins. If Wizards ends up suspending Wilderness Reclamation and Muxus, Goblin Grandee (which seems pretty possible at this point), keep an eye out for Mono-Green Evolution—the deck could be a legitimate threat in the format!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
