"Standard Pauper:Mono-Green Heroes 2014"

"Standard Pauper:Mono-Green Heroes 2014"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

I have always wanted to do a Mono-Green Heroic deck. Well with the whole Theros block now available and me having a little time to browse I have finally found the ingredients of a very affordable but powerful Assault deck. With this kind of magic I could make a bunch of Hulks and smash my way to victory. Here is the deck list:

22 x Forest

4 X Elvish Mystic 

4 X Golden Hind 

4 X Staunch Hearted Warrior 

4 x Setessan Oathsworn 

4 X Leafcrown Dryad 

2 x Pheres-Band Thunderhoof

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22 creatures

4 X Giant Growth

 4 X Aspect of Hydra 

4 X Titanic Growth 

4 X Mutant's Prey

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16 Spells

Sideboard:

4 X Feral Invocation

4 X Naturalize

3 X Phytoburst 

4 X Predators Rapport

One of the advantages of playing Green is the access to creatures that produce mana. Elvish Mystic and Golden Hind  are great mana accelerators who at the same time could be early targets of Growth Spells should you have an abundance of those in your hand and none of the Heroic creatures. The main goal of these two though  is to be able to power out a Pheres-Band Thunderhoof or Staunch Hearted Warrior on turn 3. Or a Setessan Oathsworn on Turn 2. Whatever is at hand.

An ideal play would look something like this:

Turn 1: Play Forest , 1 Elvish Mystic

Turn 2: Play Forest , 1 Golden Hind  or 1 Setessan Oathsworn

Turn 3: Play Forest , 1 Staunch Hearted Warrior or Pheres-Band Thunderhoof! 

Setessan Oathsworn , Staunch Hearted Warrior and Pheres-Band Thunderhoof are my chosen heroes for the assault. All of them have the Heroic mechanic and thus the title of this blog post. All of them get 2 +1/+1 counters every time you target them with a spell. Heroic is really big in green and the support with these common cards are cool.

Now imagine this play with Setessan OathSworn. You declare an attack in which your opponent failed to check the three cards in your hand and the 3 open mana that you have. Now let us assume that you have 3 Giant Growths in your hand. Your opponent does not block the 1/1 Setessan Oathsworn  thinking that all it could do is a measly point of damage. You Fire off 3 Giant Growths at the little. First trigger makes him a 6/6 , second trigger makes him an 11/11 and the third trigger makes him a 16/16 monstrosity! Now imagine the look on your opponents face as this all resolves. 

Once things settle down , the Setessan Oathsworn is still a 7/7 giant that could finish off your opponent on the next turn. Turns don't need to be that explosive though as a stable 5/5 Setessan Oathsworn sporting a bestowed Leafcrown dryad could do the trick just fine.

 Just imagine that this guy is the smallest of the three , Staunch Hearted Warrior is a 2/2 and Pheres-Band Thunderhoof is a 3/4! Imagine casting a G-Growth on these guys!

Now aside from the Instant speed Giant Growth I have also included Aspect of Hydra and Titanic Growth to give that Instant boost. The former is based on your devotion to green and the latter is a +4/+4!

Leafcrown Dryad is in here because of Bestow and could be an early creature on the ground should you need to defend.Mutant's Prey is a personal favorite of mine here since it can put a +1/+1 counter on let us say Staunch Hearted Warrior , making it an instant 5/5 and because of the Fight , it could take out at least one of your opponents heavy weights. The counters on Staunch Hearted Warrior do not leave him at the end  of your turn and you could either attack or defend with him. You made a monster while taking out a monster on your opponents side of the board.At instant speed too! Meaning this mean battle trick could be done while your opponent tries to attack you or if he or she is defending before your own attack.Evil.

 The downside to this deck is that you are actually leaning toward a single creature doing all the smashing and killing for you. To counter that you should attack with at least 2 heroic creatures so that your opponents would be forced to assess which creature to block and creatures that they think would be a lesser threat. When it comes to the latter not a single one of these heroic creatures are a lesser threat since they could be pumped at any time.

Well now that the Heroes are here , time to do a little smashing. Have fun.