With the release of Gatecrash fast approaching, I've been scouring the previews looking for underestimated rares and powerful uncommons. There have actually been a surprisingly large number of these so far, but today, I'm going to focus on one in particular: Urban Evolution.

Urban Evolution is a rather odd card at first glance. For 5 mana, it gives you three extra cards. We've seen this effect recently in Jace's Ingenuity, albeit at instant speed. However, it also allows you to play an additional land for your turn. With the three extra cards you've just drawn, you're almost sure to have one, and provided you hit your land drop the following turn as well, you'll end up with 7 mana. Although the acceleration isn't as powerful as something like Gilded Lotus, the card-draw makes me like this a lot, as it can help you find something big to cast with all that mana. Here's the deck I built to take advantage of this multi-function sorcery:

"Simic Ramp"

• Creatures (10)
• 2 Stormtide Leviathan
• 4 Elderscale Wurm
• 4 Invisible Stalker

• Spells (25)
• 2 Simic Keyrune
• 3 Urban Evolution
• 4 Dissipate
• 4 Farseek
• 4 Ranger's Path
• 4 Stolen Identity
• 4 Cyclonic Rift

• Lands (25)
• 10 Forest
• 10 Island
• 4 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Evolving Wilds

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Increasing Savagery
• 2 Simic Charm
• 3 Naturalize
• 4 Sensory Deprivation
• 3 Ground Seal

Buy This Deck

The Ramp

Simic Keyrune backs up Farseek in case you don't draw it, similarly enabling a turn four Urban Evolution. It also has the additional benefit of turning into a 2/3 with hexproof if you need it to. 2/3 is just large enough to kill many of the creatures in an aggro deck without dying, and hexproof makes the Keyrune immune to removal as well.

Ranger's Path is the fastest way to accelerate your mana. It can potentially be cast on turn three if you have a Farseek, and provided you have another land to play on the following turn, it will let you cast Elderscale Wurm on turn four. Unfortunately, it can only search for Forests, but it's more than worth it for a card that can get you to 7 mana so quickly.

The Control

Dissipate can help you buy time while you accelerate, but its primary function is to protect your win condition after you've put it out on the field. By countering various removal spells, Angel of Serenity, and anything else that might pose a threat to your game plan, you can lock up the game without any interference.

The Win

Stormtide Leviathan also helps prevent you from losing the game, although it does have a weakness to creatures with flying such as Restoration Angel. On the upside, the Leviathan is unblockable, meaning your opponent has no way to slow the bleeding, and you'll almost certainly be able to cast an encoded copy of Stolen Identity.

Stolen Identity lets you copy any of your creatures, giving you insurance against a removal spell as well as a way to win the game more quickly. It can also copy opposing creatures if your opponent lands a solid threat before you do. With cipher, you can encode it onto any one of your creatures, all of which have some method of pushing damage through on each attack. Every time you do hit your opponent, you'll make a copy of the best creature on the battlefield, making it easy to take over the game.

Invisible Stalker is here solely as an encode target for Stolen Identity. A narrow purpose, to be sure, but it can be extremely valuable in that role. A Stolen Identity on an Invisible Stalker is often all it takes to win the game. You can continually copy your opponent's best creatures, allowing you to trade off your tokens for the originals. If your opponent runs out of creatures, you can copy Invisible Stalker or any tokens you have left and still be ready to make a clone of any more powerful creatures your opponent casts.

The Sideboard

Ground Seal helps you fight Unburial Rites without sacrificing any cards. In a deck that often requires quite a few different cards to win the game, you'll want to avoid spending a card when you don't have to. Ground Seal will often do the same job as various other pieces of graveyard hate, and it will replace itself to avoid diluting your hand.

Sensory Deprivation can save you a lot of damage against aggro decks. For just 1 mana, this spell effectively deals with any of an aggressive deck's early creatures, from Rakdos Cackler to Ash Zealot to Geralf's Messenger. It can often be cast during the first few turns of the game without disrupting your plan too significantly, helping keep you alive long enough to stabilize with Elderscale Wurm.

Naturalize can help you fight the Aura decks that have become popular recently, buying you enough time to reach 7 mana. It's also a catch-all for other problematic artifacts and enchantments you might come across.

Increasing Savagery can turn Invisible Stalker into a legitimate win condition against control decks, forcing the opponent to use a sweeper to get rid of your unblockable, untargetable creature. Many times, your opponent will actually have sideboarded out his sweepers against you, leaving the door wide open for a 6/6 Invisible Stalker to go in for the kill.

Playtesting

B/G Aggro – Game 1

I drew Stormtide Leviathan, played my Island, and cast Invisible Stalker. I ended my turn, and my opponent played a Woodland Cemetery and cast Strangleroot Geist, attacking me for 2. He passed the turn.

I drew Simic Guildgate, played it, and attacked with the Stalker. I ended my turn. My opponent attacked for 2 again, then cast Predator Ooze and passed the turn.

I drew Urban Evolution, attacked with Invisible Stalker, then played my land and passed. My opponent cast Rancor on Predator Ooze, and I cast Cyclonic Rift on it in response. He attacked for 2 with the Geist, recast the Ooze, and ended his turn.

I drew a Forest, played it, and cast Urban Evolution. I drew a Forest, Simic Keyrune, and Dissipate. I played the Forest, attacked with my Stalker, and passed the turn. My opponent dropped me to 10 with his creatures, then cast another Predator Ooze and passed the turn.

I drew Dissipate and cast Stolen Identity, putting a Predator Ooze token onto the battlefield. I encoded onto Invisible Stalker, then attacked and made a second Ooze. I ended my turn. My opponent attacked with his Oozes and I blocked with mine. He then cast Vampire Nighthawk and passed the turn.

I drew a Forest, played it, and cast Urban Evolution. I drew Island, Evolving Wilds, and Farseek, and played the Island. I attacked with Invisible Stalker, copying the Nighthawk, and passed the turn. My opponent cast Ultimate Price on my Nighthawk token, but I countered it with Dissipate. He attacked with his Oozes. My copies blocked the originals, and he ended his turn.

I drew Simic Guildgate, played it, and attacked with my two Invisible Stalkers. I made a Vampire Nighthawk token, then cast Stormtide Leviathan and passed the turn. My opponent cast Garruk, Primal Hunter and used his −3 ability to draw five cards. He played a Forest, cast Arbor Elf, and passed the turn.

I attacked with Stormtide Leviathan and my two Vampire Nighthawks. My opponent chose not to block, dropping to 2, and I went up to 14. I passed the turn. My opponent cast Rancor and Increasing Savagery on his Vampire Nighthawk, then cast Ulvenwald Tracker and passed the turn.

I drew Stolen Identity and attacked with the two Nighthawks and the Leviathan. My opponent blocked one of my Vampires with his, and he ended up at 1 life thanks to lifelink. I cast Stolen Identity on my Stormtide Leviathan, and my opponent conceded.

Sideboarding:

+2 Simic Charm

−2 Simic Keyrune

Game 2

My opponent played Woodland Cemetery, cast Dreg Mangler, and attacked for 3 before ending his turn. I drew Simic Guildgate, played an Island, and cast Farseek, finding another Island. I passed the turn.

My opponent cast Rancor on Dreg Mangler, then cast Knight of Infamy and attacked for 6. He ended his turn. I drew Cyclonic Rift, played my Forest, and cast Farseek for another Island. I passed the turn.

My opponent attacked with Dreg Mangler, and I bounced it with Cyclonic Rift. He cast Predator Ooze and passed the turn. I cast Urban Evolution, drawing an Island, Dissipate, and Elderscale Wurm. I played the Island and Simic Guildgate before ending my turn.

My opponent cast Rancor on Predator Ooze, paid 2 life for an untapped Overgrown Tomb, and cast Dreg Mangler. He attacked with the Ooze, the Mangler, and Knight of Infamy, dropping me to 2. He passed the turn. I drew an Island, played it, and cast Elderscale Wurm, going up to 7. I ended my turn.

My opponent played a Forest and attacked with the Ooze again. He cast Lotleth Troll and passed the turn. I drew a Forest, played it and cast Stolen Identity, copying and encoding my Elderscale Wurm. I attacked with the encoded original Wurm, and my opponent blocked with everything save his Arbor Elf and the tapped Ooze. Everything died, and my opponent took 1 from the Wurm, triggering cipher. I targeted my second Wurm with the copy of Stolen Identity. My opponent cast Tragic Slip in response, but I had the Dissipate to counter it. Stolen Identity gave me another Wurm, and I cast Farseek for an Island and passed the turn.

My opponent cast Lotleth Troll and Arbor Elf and passed the turn. I drew an Island, played it, and cast my Ranger's Path to fetch two Forests. I passed the turn.

My opponent played a Golgari Guildgate and passed back. I drew Invisible Stalker, played it, and ended my turn.

My opponent passed the turn with no play, and I drew another Ranger's Path. I cast it, grabbing the last two Forests, then attacked with Invisible Stalker and ended my turn.

My opponent played an Overgrown Tomb and passed, and I drew another Invisible Stalker. I cast it, attacked with the first, and ended my turn.

My opponent cast Predator Ooze and passed the turn. I drew Stolen Identity and cast it, targeting my Invisible Stalker. I encoded it onto the Stalker and attacked with the two originals. My opponent dropped to 11, and I copied Stolen Identity, targeting Elderscale Wurm this time. My opponent killed it with Ultimate Price in response, and I ended my turn.

My opponent attacked with the smaller Predator Ooze to put a counter on it, then passed the turn. I drew another Elderscale Wurm. I attacked with my trio of Stalkers and put a copy of Elderscale Wurm onto the battlefield. I cast the one from my hand and passed the turn.

My opponent drew his card and conceded.

Wrap-Up

Although this deck can feel a bit clunky and awkward at times, it has a lot of power, and multiple Elderscale Wurms are nigh impossible for most aggressive decks to deal with. When playing the deck, you'll want to think carefully about when to attack with Elderscale Wurm, since it often opens the door for your opponent to be able to kill it. It's also worth noting the play I made in the second game, targeting Invisible Stalker with Stolen Identity even though I had an Elderscale Wurm on the battlefield. You'll often want to do this if you think your opponent might have a removal spell, since being able to encode your creature is extremely important, and your opponent can stop you from doing that by removing the original spell's target. If you've been mourning the lack of ramp decks since Primeval Titan's rotation or if you enjoy the idea of filling the board with Elderscale Wurms, give this deck a try.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, you can find me on the forums under Twinblaze, on Twitter under @Twinblaze2, or simply leave a comment below.