This deck has a shockingly consistent t2 kill rate of around 20-25%, and a t3 kill rate of around 70-85%. What puts it over the top is that it has built-in off-board Lightning Bolt protection in the form of Invigorate and built-in off-board Daze protection in the form of Elvish Spirit Guide, arguably the format's premier removal and counter-spell staples, respectively. This is especially true against a low-to-the-ground deck where Force of WillGC's tempo loss is a real cost.
If you remember legacy Infect decks then you'll have a rough idea of this deck's play patterns. What caused legacy Infect to fall from a solid fringe deck to virtually forgotten was the prevalence of Orcish BowmastersGC, which heavily punishes x/1 creatures to the extent where Infect's high number of x/1's and low threat count made it particularly susceptible to OBM.
Meanwhile "Bearserkers" employs mostly x/2s, with the exception of Urdnan, Dromoka Warrior, but even then we a) don't really mind Urdnan being obvious removal bait (even when he has 2+ toughness he'll be a removal target) and b) he only needs to land one counter to be out of Bowmaster ping danger (putting aside that we can protect him with Invigorate). The deck is about as fast as infect, perhaps just a tad slower, but with the upside of being a true combat deck racing on the power/toughness axis that is inherently Magic's core mechanic.
So how does the deck work? You can think of the deck as a series of doublers, and in general we want to hit about four doublings to end the game. Just as a snowball rolling down the mountain doubles in size towards the top, and again and again as it rolls down, the same principle applies to our creatures.
So for example, Urdnan's granting of double-strike is a doubler. Scythecat Cub's fetchland counter doubling is another. Hardened Scales turning a single counter into two counters is another, although in this case it must be the first doubler to work as a doubling, while double-strike is order-agnostic, and Scyethecat wants to be the last of the counter doublings. Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is another doubler when paired with a fetch, but it too must be one of the early doublings in order to count as a doubler (after Scales if there is one, but prior to others). Botanical Brawler, while not directly a doubler, is a highly efficient 2-counter drop, which can function as the start of the snowball's growth. Berserk is the last doubling we'll use, generally saved until after blockers are declared (note that they do stack with each other, so casting two will double a creature, and then double it again). Invigorate is free power/toughness on our finisher, and we'll generally want to resolve it prior to resolving a Berserk (so that the +4 power is doubled again) and/or alongside Urdnan's double-strike.
When you combine all possible scenarios where we're able to achieve 4 doublings by t2, you end up with something like a 20-25% potential t2 kill rate. It takes time to get accustomed to seeing the t2 kill lines, and sometimes they don't even present themselves until after the t2 draw step. As such, it's always best to look for the line and play like you'll find it, so that at worst you'll be delayed to t3, and at best you'll find the t2 line.
You might be asking yourself why I kept Hardened Scales, since it doesn't do anything on its own and usually that's a big "no" for an aggro deck. The answer is because nothing else does what it does better. I looked at other options like Scale Up, but none of them meaningfully accelerated the deck's speed over what Scales already does, and Scales is special because it's both an early game accelerant and helps us win matches when they get grindy.
The Sideboard selection is very intentional:
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4x Veil of Summers are mandatory, they protect us from blue counterspells, black discard, removal in either color, and so forth, they cantrip, and they can be cast with a pitched Elvish Spirit Guide.
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3x Boseiju, Who Endures are findable with Once Upon a Time, work to help us break prison locks (i.e. Chalice, Blood Moon, Trinisphere), hose sol lands from Stompy decks and utility lands from Lands variants, and we have 8x legendary creatures to bring the channel down to one mana.
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3x Endurance are excellent vs Delver, mill, reanimator and most other graveyard strategies.
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2x Doorkeeper Thrull is excellent vs The One RingGC (hoses its damage protection ETB which is all we really care about as an aggro deck), Thassa's OracleGC nonsense (i.e. Doomsday, Oops), pitch elementals (i.e. Solitude, Fury), etc.
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2x Containment Priest hoses cheat-into-play strats (i.e. Sneak and Show, Reanimator, etc).
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A single Sylvan Safekeeper functions as our white removal protection (although it can come in vs other decks as well) -- white removal is a valid concern for this deck.
You'll need to be ready to Mulligan pretty aggressively to get the most out of the deck. In general you want to have 3 threats (but never less than 2) and 2 lands (never more than 3) after any turn-1 Once Upon a Time cast. Don't be afraid to put your faith into OUaT to get you that second land, or another creature. If we don't take that risk then we're not squeezing all the value out of the card.
I haven't seen this deck anywhere else in legacy, so as far as I can tell it's a new aggro sub-type. I think it's the spiritual successor to infect, except actually quite a bit stronger. Give it a spin and let me know what you think!
