Ah Green, the favorite color for people wanting to turn random donks sideways and casting pump spells that would never see play outside of Limited. Obviously there’s a Constructed Mono Green deck out there, just like every format, the only thing that changes over time is how good the deck actually is. For now, Mono Green is legitimate, I present to you: Stupid Green Deck.

Stupid Green Deck by Kamahl0

I spent a significant chunk of time trying to create an aggro deck that didn’t scoop to the Cascade lottery decks and didn’t get blown out by mass creature destruction. So obviously I saw this deck after making a bunch of much more elaborate and less effective decks and it ended up solving my main problems. I am of course talking about Jund”¦ Ok, I’m not, I’m actually talking about the Stupid Green deck, but Jund fits the requirements too. However, the idea of playing a deck with a completely braindead mirror while being the most hated deck in the room is daunting. With Stupid Green deck, you shrug off almost all removal and don’t scoop to Jund. Even when looking at the match purely on merits, you can see options Stupid Green has that let it fight Jund despite playing fair.

Why play a deck like this? Well it has a huge advantage over normal aggressive strategies with eight Planeswalkers, all of which are capable of making armies, along with eight creatures that do the same thing. All the early drops are situated to either accelerate into the stronger four-drops or cantrip and chump block. Meanwhile you have [card]Oran-Rief, the Vastwood[/card] to make your card advantage engines into deadly perils for the opponent. You can’t interact with other decks very well past blocking for your first couple of turns, but in this environment do you even need too? Unless you get paired against the Hedron Crab deck, I’ll lean towards no.

Jund has three flaws you can successfully exploit with Stupid Green and decks in general.

1. Jund is sluggish

Jund is not a slow strategy by any means. Not unless you think being able to play a turn two 4/4 and backing it with Blightning or [card]Sprouting Thrinax[/card] is slow. No, I use the word sluggish* because the deck has many hands which play out at a much more muddled and disjointed pace than its ideal draws. Part of this is on the mana it plays, since Jund runs a selection of comes-into-play-tapped lands and situationally useful lands like basic lands. It looks wrong when I write it down, but how often does a Swamp, Mountain, [card]Dragonskull Summit[/card] devastate the potential of future plays unless you draw the green source? I’ve seen people run Terramorphic Expanse and Rupture Spire just to cut down on how many awkward mana draws the deck gets.

*Yes, I realize sluggish and slow have the same overall meaning. Shut up.

It also can have removal heavy draws along with one main threat which are perfectly keepable against most decks, but suck against SGD. What exactly are you killing against the Stupid Green deck that does anything? Yeah it’ll suck if I can’t draw a Planeswalker (Gee, only got eight) and Master of the Hunt plus Ant Queen die before I can untap a single time with either. So yeah, I’m completely busted out if I can’t draw a quarter of my deck or it they all die to Lightning Bolt, Bituminous Blast and Maelstrom Pulse over and over. However a sub-par or average hand won’t be able to deal with the mish-mash of threats backed by Planeswalkers and our own Vampire Nocturnus, Eldrazi Monument.

2. Jund mana is tuuurrrible /Charles Barkley

Expanding on what I mentioned previously, Jund frequently has to take mulligans or keep otherwise unsound hands, because the mana it runs is very iffy. Since you play against this deck on MODO about seven billion times per 8-man or Daily Event, I’ve watched quite a few Jund draws just go nowhere and the subsequent crying. Having played the deck before in previous Standard and Alara Block I can occasionally relate to their pain. I then remember I like Stupid Green because it’s mono-colored and has almost no mana troubles at all. I then laugh and enter the red zone.

Half the reason to play this deck because the number of mana related mulligans you’ll be forced to make is minimal.

3. Jund can’t effectively deal with swarm decks that curve out

For game one they are completely cold to starts involving Llanowar Elves, Elvish Archdruid and any four-drop in the deck. Really though, just hit a couple of early drops and any sort of aggression on Jund’s part will be put aside to try and deal with your Elves and token generators before the game gets out of hand. This plays right into Garruk Wildspeaker and Nissa Revane, both of which can produce nearly endless numbers of creatures to play defense with until reaching a critical mass. Combined with Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, these creatures are frequently larger than any ground pounders Jund actually runs in the deck. Sure, Broodmate Dragon can still fly over and get you, but you’ll typically have enough time to set-up lethal if Broodmate becomes an actual factor.

Still if you don’t believe me, just think of all the games Boros wins against Jund. Frequently the game will be over by the time the first creature drop has even been made by Jund because a third or so or their life is gone at that point. SGD can’t quite explode that fast out of the gates, but it can make a whole lot more guys than Boros can, meaning when it comes time to trade you’ll be in a better position.

Jund does have some options like Pyroclasm and Jund Charm post-board, but a lot of the mass-damage spells can be negated with the use of Oran-Rief. Of course, this even assumes you care about trying to keep your Archdruids alive as the other eight creatures that die to two damage are mostly irrelevant. In fact that’s one of the main flaws for a lot of sideboard plans against the deck. People naturally assume that bringing in more removal will actually help, when the opposite is the case. I have no issues getting into a drawn-out attrition war because SGD has been designed specifically to outlast opponents.

As for specific card choices, most of them should be self-explanatory, so instead I’ll point out the things this deck does right compared to most of the others in the field. The first improvement over many decks is the use of eight Planeswalkers for card advantage along with eight other high-end creatures which can create small armies on their own. This allows the deck to play an early aggression game without fear of running out of gas down the road.

The finisher choice of Eldrazi Monument over Overrun is also a solid decision. There are times where you can pump out a million guys where pretty much either card will win the game and there are times where you only have three or so, but can continually generate a dork or two a turn, in which case Monument lets you keep attacking in while not dying to any opposing Double Dragons or Baneslayer Angel. Of course, against certain decks where you just want to kill as quickly as possible, Overrun is superior. Why not use it to ruin Boros and Red by keeping it around in the sideboard?

Master of the Wild Hunt was a card I was skeptical about since it falls under the ‘die to everything’ category of three toughness and only generates one guy a turn. Turns out the Masters are absurd though, allowing you to completely dominate a board position if the Master lives through a few untap steps. Normally I wouldn’t count on this happening, but the Archdruid and Planeswalkers frequently take most of the removal that would normally be saved for him. This is one of the few decks that can actually use the concept of overloading the opponent’s removal without it being a lame cop-out.

Really the only changes I’d make to the original maindeck is look for replacements to Vines of Vastwood, since they haven’t been very good. I can see why they were originally included; protecting your token generators from removal while occasionally getting full value out of them in combat was sweet. However you rarely want to leave mana open for the protection and Vines is a spectacularly bad topdeck in a deck with very few.

One card I wanted to try out was Algae Gharial, since a huge number of your guys die and Shroud may be the most relevant attribute in all of Standard. In olden times it was one of my favorite ways to win a long game against Jund and Naya. Even if everything else kicks the bucket, a large Shroud creature will generally just win the game, as Blue players can report with [card]Sphinx of Jwar Isle[/card], .

Another possibility against control decks is the sideboard inclusion of Howl of the Night Pack. In the control match, it’s common for the game to until turn fifteen or longer since many control builds are fully loaded with board control. Creating five or six 2/2 Wolves is great to race Baneslayer or Sphinx with and adds to the inevitability Planeswalkers bring you.

The other possible evolution of the deck is to switch from its mono-Green roots and add in another color. Red is the obvious choice as it brings Bloodbraid Elf to the table (Despite having pretty awkward Cascades in this deck) and possibly Sarkhan Vol as well. Another set of Planeswalkers pushes the inevitability theme even more and doubles as a potential finisher which allows for cut backs on the number of Monument / Overrun needed for the deck.

Do not add Lightning Bolt though, since the burn spell does nothing for the deck and simply takes away from legitimate threats. The only burn spell I’d be interested in running is Magma Rift against Baneslayer Angel if I thought it was going to be a big deal. Manabarbs also seems like a pretty sweet board addition since it curbstomps control in a big way and you even have life-gain from Nissa to negate the drawback of your main threats costing four.

Sideboard-wise the deck packs a whole lot of Faeries hate, which is unfortunate because the deck isn’t legal anymore. If you were really worried about Baneslayer Angel, Oran-Rief Recluse is better for the same mana cost or even Entangling Vines at a cheaper cost. If you were more worried about Broodmate Dragon well, you shouldn’t be. Great Sable Stag in an alright choice, but doesn’t really seem to fit with how the deck plays out. Part of me just wants to add in a pair of Gargoyle Castle along with Mold Shambler and go with the land destruction plan against control decks. Acidic Slime with Mold Shambler isn’t going to single-handedly crush dreams, but it’ll put a big dent in getting Identity Crisis, Cruel Ultimatum or any giant game-winning spell to hit play.

Note that the deck isn’t perfect match-wise, it just happens to out-muscle many other midrange plans and quick aggro decks. It can still be raced down by Boros with a good draw and has major problems with midrange strategies like Bant; which can stop non-creature spells while producing bigger guys. I also wouldn’t write off Cascade Control, as that deck can simply blow up all of your Planeswalkers via Blightning and Maelstrom Pulse while ignoring your smaller dorks and forcing you to discard your hand. Decks that have a very strong non-board presence are big issues for the deck and need to be more heavily addressed with the sideboard.

That’s it for today; I just wanted to highlight a very fun and dangerous deck I’ve slowly seen growing in popularity online.

Josh Silvestri

Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom