Card swap-out: Maelstrom Pulse --> Allosaurus Shepherd, Natural Order --> Grist, the Hunger Tide
Note: the deck is currently in a more "casual" and -1/-1 counter themed build
The description is a bit outdated, its more "all in" combo than it was before although I have the other cards if I ever want to switch it back. the printing of Yawgmoth, Thran Physician took the deck to the next level and that is basically the best card to find in any situation, its a 1 sided wrath, combo piece, and card draw engine all in one. With upside. be wary of the amount of life lost but you have 40 life and if you can't draw something in 39 cards to win, then there's no point in living.
This is my personal favorite deck, and there are a number of combos and different ways to pull off the combos that you need to know to play the deck. This is a combo centered deck so it does try and play a faster game with most of the cards finding combo pieces and i have cut a lot of the cards you normally find in a a Hapatra deck to make it more efficient as those cards are to slow or don't do enough.
To start off we have probably the one you expect, Devoted Druid and Quillspike, this combo is just tapping devoted druid for mana and then untapping by putting a -1/-1 counter on it and then using the {G} produced to remove the counter with quill spike. Doing this while you have either Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons or Nest of Scarabs on the battlefield will give you as many snakes or insects as you want, and if you have Concordant Crossroads out you can swing for lethal that turn, you can also have out Obelisk Spider out and get an arbitarily large amount of -1/-1 counters being placed triggers and then drain everyone for infinite.
Next up there is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, pair him up with either Devoted Druid or Cinderhaze Wretch and you can get infinite death triggers and -1/-1 counters being placed triggers. combine this with Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, Nest of Scarabs, Obelisk Spider, or Blood Artit and you can win the game, (you would still need Concordant Crossroads to win with creatures), this is probably the best combo to get with Tooth and Nail as you pretty much just win on the spot. If you pull of this combo with Mikaeus and Cinderhaze Wretch (was a back up devoted druid but is no longer here) with Concordant Crossroads out you can mind twist everyone (although I don't know why you wouldn't just win the game). the Mikaeus with either piece and Earthcraft also generate infinite mana if you need that.
The last "combo" in the deck is Blowfly Infestation and either Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons or Nest of Scarabs. With either of these cards out, 2 1/1 tokens from wither source and a way to put a -1/-1 counter on a creature to kill it (which Hapatra conveniently provides) you can start a loop of placing a -1/-1 counter on a Snake (or Insect, but ill just be saying Snake), get the death trigger from Blowfly Infestation and a token creation trigger from Hapatra or Nest of Scarabs, you target the other Snake witht eh BlowFly Trigger and put it on the stack first (bottom of the stack), you then put the Snake making trigger on the stack next (Top) and let it resolve, you first get the Snake and then you kill the other Snake with the Blowfly trigger, you then repeat this process for an infinite loop. This combo by itself doesn't win the game but the same as Mikaeus it creates infinite death and -1/-1 counter triggers. you can then have both hapatra and nest of scarabs out to get a large amount of snakes (as many as you want), or you can have out Blood Artist or Obelisk Spider to drain everyone. to stop the loop just put a -1/-1 counter on a creature with more than 1 toughness that will not die or put the triggers on the stack in the reverse order.
There are also a few cards in the deck that while not infinite are defiantly combos that people hate and put a target on you. The best one and my personal favorite would be equipping Viridian Longbow (might put it back in one i can play in persona again) onto a 1/1 deathtouch snake, and because any damage dealt by a creature is lethal damage you get a free kill spell every turn. In a similar vein Crumbling Ashes (also kinda want to put it back in) just lets you kill whatever you put a counter on with Hapatra, just be careful because its not a may ability. You may have noticed that this deck doesn't run Reclamtion Sage (its does now, bec its really handy to be able to flash it out instant speed with chord of calling), and this is because Wickerbough Elder is just so much better, it's a repeatable rec sage with hapatra and other cards that place -1/-1 counter such as Channeler Initiate. The last one would be Banewhip Punisher which is just a present threat if you have multiple things with -1/-1 counters on them and with a recursion source such as Meren of Clan Nel Toth or Phyrexian Reclamation or aVolrath's Stronghold becomes a potent threat.
The rest of the deck is spot removal, and just ways to get to the combos easier. It is completely possible to play the deck with out using the combos for a more casual group (this has become a lot more competitive since this was written like in 2017 or something) as this deck can play the value game very well. I have had this deck since the card was released but I did not put any decks up until early this year, this deck has also gone through many different iterations to make it better so any feed back is welcome although I believe by now the list is pretty refined (lots of new bits of removal came out since i wrote this).
