I’m back running a mono green aggro deck. I had a really good run with another variant on this theme back in Fall 2020, when I made it to Mythic two months in a row. I haven’t seen Mythic since.

I wanted to give green aggro a go, and found this deck online. I’ve been very happy with this deck so far: I’m now on Diamond 1, and winning enough that I’m pretty sure I’ll reach Mythic soon.

Format: Standard (Strixhaven)

Deck list

Creatures:

3 Old-Growth Troll
3 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
4 Gemrazer
3 Stonecoil Serpent
1 Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig
3 Questing Beast
2 Lovestruck Beast
2 Nessian Hornbeetle
3 Swarm Shambler

Planeswalkers:

2 Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate
2 Garruk, Unleashed

Instants, sorceries, enchantments, artifacts:

2 Blizzard Brawl
1 In Search of Greatness
2 The Great Henge
2 Snakeskin Veil

Lands:

3 Castle Garenbrig
22 Snow-Covered Forest

Notes on play

This is a very straight-forward, easy-to-play creature-heavy deck. Just keep banging monsters on the table and hitting as hard as you can. There’s nothing particularly clever about this deck, it’s just pure power.

It’s a quick deck, but like before, has some legs, and can survive in longer matches. The toughest opponents are decks that are even faster: a white life gain deck or a red aggro deck can easily outrun this deck (it’s also possible I don’t mulligan hard enough).

In my previous green deck, Vivien wasn’t as good as Garruk. Here Vivien is great. I’m particularly fond of using Vivien’s -2 ability to play Vorinclex AND Questing Beast at the same time for just six mana. Awesome!

I’ve used Gemrazer on Vorinclex just once, but let’s just say having two Vorinclex’s on board at the same time is well worth dropping one of them from 6/6 to 4/4, especially if you have The Great Henge, because now the second Vorinclex is 10/10. Most of the really fun interactions with this deck tend to happen around Vorinclex.

Old-Growth Troll is great. It’s a nice blocker that’s easy to sacrifice, because then it will boost your mana and when your mana is fine, you can return it to the battlefield. Double trouble!

I haven’t done any changes to the deck so far. I’m considering swapping out In Search of Greatness. It’s fine: you sometimes get nice free plays out of it, and in a long-winded match having the ability to scry every turn to sift out the lands is useful, but I rarely find myself hoping to draw In Search of Greatness, and more often I hope to draw a Blizzard Brawl to get rid of some nasty blocker. I’ll try replacing in another Blizzard Brawl to see if that works better.

Arena import:

3 Old-Growth Troll (KHM) 185
3 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider (KHM) 199
2 The Great Henge (ELD) 161
4 Gemrazer (IKO) 155
3 Stonecoil Serpent (ELD) 235
1 Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig (ELD) 185
3 Questing Beast (ELD) 171
2 Lovestruck Beast (ELD) 165
2 Nessian Hornbeetle (THB) 182
3 Swarm Shambler (ZNR) 207
2 Blizzard Brawl (KHM) 162
1 In Search of Greatness (KHM) 177
2 Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate (IKO) 175
2 Garruk, Unleashed (M21) 183
3 Castle Garenbrig (ELD) 240
22 Snow-Covered Forest (KHM) 284
2 Snakeskin Veil (STA) 57