Excuse the pun
Note: This deck, especially the sideboard, is still WIP. If you like where it's going, I'd appreciate to hearwhat you think about it :)
The general idea of the deck is an elvish tribal with +1/+1-counter synergy. We have a pretty aggressive curve and it is very easy to hit your land drops thanks to the two Attunes, and Rishkar lets us ramp quite a bit, which is the reason we're only running 18 lands.You'll have some start hands that you'd need to mulligan, but I very seldomly actually had problems with the mana base.We are trying to win the match by being a general beatdown deck, but at the moment I am also running two Aetherwind Baskers to ramp into.
I will start with the creatures:
Almost all of our 26 creatures have somewhat of a counter synergy, making easy targets for Rishkar, if we can keep them on the board. We are running 4 Narnam Renegades to get in some early damage as well as have a good blocker against our opponents bigger creatures. The 4 Metallic Mimics can make our deck a whole lot faster and are the perfect lead up to our turn 3 Rishkar, of which we are running 4 copies as well. Even though he is Legendary, we can still get value off of his ETB trigger, so we generally don't mind seeing him more often.
The card that gives the deck its name, Armorcraft Judge (of which we are running 3 copies), gives us a big body (especially with a Mimic already in play) while letting us draw ridiculous amounts of cards at times. It should be noted that the Judge actually triggers off of itself if it gets a +1/+1-counter from Mimic as well - the value!!!
The other creatures should be pretty self explanatory. Sylvan Advocate can often attack as a 3/4 or even a 5/6 in the late game and afterwards still tap for mana,
Kujar Seedsculptor
lets us put a counter on the Mimic to make it more resilient against removal, and the
Highspire Artisan
enters the battlefield as a 2/5 Reach body with mimic in play, meaning it can block Heart of Kiran, for example.
Spells:
We are running 2 Attune with Aether because the card is just so good at helping us hit our land drops, and it also gives us 2 energy for either Aether Hub, Harnessed Lightning or the Aetherwind Basker.The 4 Blossoming Defense and 2 Heroic Intervention help us keep our key pieces on board. I wouldn't cast Metallic Mimic on turn 2 in most matchups, but wait until turn 3, to keep up one green Mana for Blossoming Defense.2 copies of Shock, 2 copies of Harnessed Lightning and one
Hunt the Weak
are our mainboard removal spells for the moment, this is a place where I am still working out the details.
The three copies of Nissa, Voice of Zendikar are also very strong in being able to make us more creatures and to put +1/+1 counters on the entire board. Nissa's abilities can be used pretty flexibly, as the board state requires it.
Lands:
This leads us to our mana base, where we are running 4 copies of Aether Hub - mainly to use the Energy for the Harnessed Lightnings or the Basker - as well as 4 copies of Game Trail, 9 Forests and 1 Mountain.
