For a time in Magic’s history, Green was one of the premier colors for fair aggressive decks. These days, Green is typically either a supporting color, providing cards like Wild Nacatl and Burning-Tree Emissary, or the deck straddles the lines between aggro, midrange, and control, and depends on Green for Birds of Paradise, value engines such as Collected Company, and combo pieces like Melira, Sylvok Outcast. Is it possible to build Green decks that just look to curve out with efficient creatures anymore? Or have creatures become too efficient and value-oriented to focus so much on raw power and toughness? There’s only one way to find out:

Mono-Green Stompy - Modern | Yann S

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Dungrove Elder
• 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 2 Groundbreaker
• 2 Leatherback Baloth
• 3 Scavenging Ooze
• 4 Avatar of the Resolute
• 4 Dryad Militant
• 4 Experiment One
• 4 Strangleroot Geist

• Instants (10)
• 2 Dismember
• 4 Aspect of Hydra
• 4 Vines of Vastwood

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Rancor

• Lands (21)
• 19 Forest
• 2 Treetop Village

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Creeping Corrosion
• 1 Fog
• 1 Natural State
• 1 Thragtusk
• 2 Back to Nature
• 2 Gut Shot
• 2 Prey Upon
• 2 Skylasher
• 3 Feed the Clan

Buy This Deck

So what are you doing with this consistency? You’re just playing the largest Green creature available at every cost along the curve. You start with Dryad Militant and Experiment One, which are both efficient creatures with reasonable upside. Scavenging Ooze is a reasonable body with an incredible effect that lets you interact with unfair decks and scale your threats over the course of a game. At the same cost, Strangleroot Geist is efficient pressure and resiliency, while Avatar of the Resolute is a fine body with potentially enormous upside, given that four of the five creatures we’ve touched on so far can generate +1/+1 counters.

The 3-drops are split among Dungrove Elder, Leatherback Baloth, and Groundbreaker. These cards all do reasonably different things depending on what you need. Groundbreaker lets you steal games out from under Death's Shadow decks, particularly in conjunction with pump spells. Leatherback Baloth is the most efficient body you’re going to get at 3 mana. Dungrove Elder is immune to all the most common removal spells and scales over the course of the game.

The key to this deck is the pump spells; they are what let you fight against removal and steal games against opponent who aren’t careful enough. Rancor is the best way to make sure that your pump spells are converted to damage, even if you need to use them to tip combat into your favor. Vines of the Vastwood is the best way to fight against opposing removal spells, since many opponents will let you get both a card and four damage off of it. Lastly, Aspect of Hydra is the card that lets you just end games out of nowhere, since it can easily represent five or more power.

If you’re looking for a fair aggressive deck that can steal games off of the top tier decks in the format without breaking your budget, this is one of the best choices available to you in Modern.