Introduction
Welcome to Hangry Bears! The bears that aren't just angry, they're HANGRY (to gobble up +1/+1 counters, of course)!
ʕっ˘ڡ˘ςʔ
In essence we're a hatebears deck in a Selesnya scales shell. The hatebears hibernate in the sideboard for game 1 and come out to feed after. This deck can win t2, can you figure out how? ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ
The basic idea is to win as a fair aggressive midrange deck in game 1. Games 2/3 we can flex our bears depending on the matchup. Once Upon a Time helps us with hand-fixing and bear-finding, and an Elvish Spirit Guide package (also find-able with OUaT) accelerates the deck and hoses Daze
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PS - Kudo, King Among Bears is our mascot, so he gets an honorary spot in our maybeboard.
ʕ´•㉨•`ʔ♡
He'd probably get a slot in the SB if not for Urza's Saga being all over the format (he buffs Constructs, sadly). He's hilarious against Phyrexian Dreadnought and Marit Lage though, and buffs a bunch of our board, so if you're feeling frisky or your meta calls for it feel free to give our king a slot! Otherwise he'll cheer you on from the maybeboard
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Card Selection
Creatures (Main Board)
- 3x Esper Sentinel: great card draw vs a large number of decks, immensely better with a +1/+1 counter, side out vs fast combo decks that aim to win fast (i.e. oops! all spells etc) or aggro decks with few spells.
- 3x Zack Fair: removal protection, boardwipe protection, grows Botanical Brawlers when he enters, can double his counters with an Ozolith (works like modular in this regard), gets our Boseiju down to one mana channel, loves hardened scales, can activate off a pitched elvish spirit guide, amazing one-drop for this deck.
- 2x Urdnan, Dromoka Warrior: grants double strike to an attacking creature the turn he comes down, super explosive on a Brawler or Sycthecat Cub, ETBs a +1/+1 counter as a bonus, loves hardened scales, get Boseiju down to a one-mana channel.
- 4x Botanical Brawler: enters with two counters (more if we have Scales down), virtually everything we do grows him, is a free "go tall" while we're making the rest of our board wide.
- 4x Luminarch Aspirant: a body that grows anything we want every turn with no input needed.
- 4x Scythecat Cub: explosive landfall trigger with fetch lands (we run 8 fetches) which we can find with OUaT.
- 4x Elvish Spirit Guide: makes the deck far more explosive and resilient to Daze, since we're creature-heavy we only really fear Daze and Force of Will, but since our highest CMC creature is 2, Force is fine with us, opponents will much prefer to Daze, ESG enables us to bait them out. Also enables us to activate Zack Fair's ability when tapped out, lets us drop two 1-drops t1 (i.e. Scales and Zack, for example) or a 2-drop on t1, which can be important in fast-paced legacy especially when we're relying on 2-drop hatebears. Also we can find them with OUaT, and as a 2/2 body they can be relevant if our other creatures are removed and we have an Ozolith stuffed with counters and need something to put them on. In many ways ESG is what makes the deck legacy viable.
Spells (Main Board)
- 4x Hardened Scales: most legacy players scoff at scales, but with Elvish Spirit Guide enabling us to get one down plus another one-drop, the draw back of "scales go" t1s is well mitigated. Makes our deck explosive. Side out against fast combo decks that aim to win very fast.
- 4x Swords to Plowshares: efficient removal vs go tall and/or cheat-into-play strategies. Candidate for siding out when it's weak.
- 4x Once Upon a Time: free t1 hand fixing, also finds fetchlands for our Scythecats, and/or hatebears in games 2/3.
- 3x The Ozolith: removal and boardwipe protection, double counters via Zack Fare (works like modular), tutorable with Urza's Saga.
- 1x Shadowspear: excels in grindy games, tutorable with Urza's Saga.
I won't go through every land one at a time. We've got eight fetches for Scythecat, plus a set of Savannahs, a plains, a forest, two Boseijus for removal, a Horizon Canopy, an Urza's Saga, a Pendelhaven, and a Karakas. OUaT can help find what we most need.
Sideboard
Our sideboard philosophy is to pick as many different options as possible to cover as many different decks across as many different axes as possible. Flash creatures are prioritized because pitching ESG to land a t1 hatebear (as a surprise during opponent's turn) can be huge. We have six creatures that do this, and two others that can come in t1 on our turn. In fact, if you look closely, you'll realize that every single card in our SB benefits from ESG. Not an accident.
- 1x Collector Ouphe: shuts down artifacts, hinders only our shadowspear in our main board and nothing in our SB.
- 1x Gaddock Teeg: stops most planeswalkers, most board wipes, and a slew of spells. Hinders nothing in our main board and only Force of Vigor in our SB.
- 1x Scavenging Ooze: excellent against delver, not terrible vs any graveyard strategies (and there are a lot of them), synergizes with counters. Could run Lion Sash in this slot but I prefer the scooze.
- 2x Containment Priest: so good vs a bunch of busted legacy stuff, hoses Vial decks, reanimator decks, Oops decks, just so much stuff, has flash, is awesome, stops nothing on our side.
- 2x Doorkeeper Thrull: hoses all kinds of ETBs of which we have virtually none (Urdnan's ETB +1/+1 is all, and that's not why we run him anyway). ETB effects are huge in legacy, stops Thassa's OracleGC trigger, stops The One RingGC protection ETB, Atraxa ETB, Pyrogoyf, Fury, Solitude, almost the entire Death and Taxes list, and on and on.
- 2x Endurance: excellent vs many busted graveyard strategies and/or mill on a flash 3/4 with reach = awesome.
- 1x Grafdigger's Cage: shuts down graveyard strats on a different axis than Endurance, great vs Oops, Reanimator, Storm, Dredge, Elves, etc, stops nothing on our side.
- 1x Pithing Needle: super flexible, strong against a ton of stuff, no explanation necessary.
- 2x Force of Vigor: helps us deal with prison strategies and artifact decks. Because we're so low to the ground we have to be wary of prison strategies, FoV is our best answer.
- 2x Veil of Summer: great vs UB, deals with discards and counterspells, can pitch Elvish Spirit Guide to cast it, cantrips. With UBx taking up 30%+ of the meta these are great.
The sideboard swaps are heavily match-dependent, to make it easier just ask yourself "What's bad this match?" and free up that many slots, then swap from the SB, in order, starting with best for the match until all the slots are filled. This is a great way to SB effectively without diluting more than necessary or overthinking things too much.
Mainboard Swap-Outs
For MB swap-outs, you'll want to swap out one-drops exclusively. All the MB two-drops+ are core cards. As a refresher, and in no particular order, here are the one-drops (replace these with SB cards as appropriate):
Keepable Hands / Mulliganing
The rule of thumb for a keepable hand is you want at least two creatures (not counting ESG) and at least two lands, reduceable by one if you have a Ounce Upon a Time. So if you have two creatures, one land and one OUaT, keep the hand. Yes, there's no guarantee you'll hit a land in the top 5, but if we don't take that risk we're not squeezing all the value out of the card. Alternatively if you have one creature, two lands, and a OUaT, keep the hand and dig for a second creature. Out of a 7-card hand, two lands + two creatures leaves three flex slots for things like artifacts, hardened scales, swords, ESG, extra land or creature, etc. A "good" hand should generally have three creature threats (after digging with OUaT) but you can't always get what you want.
Tips & Tricks
I've tinkered with this deck for a couple years now and I must say it is smarter than the average bear deck ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ
Now for some quick tips:
- Rule #1: Always spread your +1/+1 counters in such a way as to make choosing what to remove as confusing as possible for your opponent. If you made it easy to decide, you dun goofed.
- If you have an Ozolith on the board you can ignore Rule #1 and "go tall" on a big trampler vs most decks.
- Ignore both of the above if it's a bleak matchup and you're living on a bear's prayer that they have no removal ʕ੭·͡ᴥ·ʔ੭
- Use Zack Fair to confound your opponent's removal options. If he removes Zack, you can pass his counters to something else. If he removes something else, you can pass Zack's counters to them (granting indestructible). Also The Ozolith "sees" the counters leave him and so they go to it too -- a counter doubling that can accelerate the deck immensely.
- Also regarding Zack, you can generally stack counters on him safely if you're not yet sure where else to put them or still developing your board. Be aware of Stifle vs blue, especially games 2/3 or vs Stifelnought variants. Don't forget that Zack gets your Boseiju, Who Endures channel down to one mana, a handy perk.
- You can Karakas either Zack or Urdnan to save them from removal. The next time you put them down, your Brawlers will see them and grow, a win-win ʕ^ᴥ^ʔ
- Our bears don't like to be Dazed and confused ʕ⊙ω⊙ʔ Be smart about playing around it vs blue or baiting it out if you have Elvish Spirit Guide.
- On that note you can feign Daze off your Misty Rainforests and Flooded Strands, be sure to do so if you have no current use for them.
- Urdnan, Dromoka Warrior can end games very quickly if it sticks around; he's a huge removal target if your board is even slightly developed. Use this to your advantage by putting counters on other things to make that decision harder. See Rule #1. ʕ˘ω˘ʔ
- Always fetch up your basic Plains and Forest first unless there is some compelling reason not to. One Plains casts every white spell in the deck, but you'll need a Forest if Boseiju's channel ability is needed (unless you have an Elvish Spirit Guide), so which one you grab first will be match- and hand-dependent.
- Remember that you have a couple ways to drop +1/+1 counters at instant speed: 1: Activating a fetchland with a Scyethcat on the board, or 2: Activating Zack's ability. These are useful as combat tricks or as survival tricks vs burn removal.
- Esper Sentinel is great, but he's waaaay better with a +1/+1 counter. No blue mage is paying that ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ
- Scythecat Cub and Brawler are buddies, the cub likes to make brawler huge very quickly. Two cubs grow faster than a cub + brawler when you're playing fetches, but the cub + brawler combo is the next best thing since Brawler starts at 2 counters.
- Be smart about your fetches. It can get pretty complicated with Scythecat, but you'll need to make decisions about when to play a fetch, when to let it sit for instant-speed counter dropping, and when to keep it in hand in case you topdeck (or Once Upon a Time) a Scythecat. Also remember you can Once Upon a Time a fetchland if Scythecat is already in play, or a non-fetch if you have a fetch in play (place the non-fetch, then activate the fetch = 2nd land drop of the turn).
- Don't forget to attack first, THEN crack your fetch. This way you can see what the block assignments are beforehand (the exception is if Urdnan is down and you need to crack a fetch to give a specific attacker double-strike).
- Luminarch Aspirant is your plain vanilla counter engine. Your opponent's favorite time to mess with the stack will be when his counters come down -- bolting a 3-toughness creature right when they're getting that 4th toughness = ʕಠ_ಠʔ See rule #1.
- With Pendelhaven we're more resilient vs burn removal and bowmaster pings. You buff Esper Sentinel in response to an opponent's first-turn cast (the cost is checked when the ability resolves, not when it goes on the stock). Great card for reactive use -- block assignments etc.
- Be sure to read my sideboarding advice above -- the short paragraph beneath the bullet list of SB cards. It's a very effective method for siding cards in/out that's straightforward yet works very well.
Conclusion
This deck is super fun, very explosive, and can be pretty control-y post-board. There are lots of decisions to make with your Once Upon a Times -- picking lines, choosing between proactive and reactive plays, where to place your counters, and so on. While it's properly classified as a fair mid-range deck, its potential as both aggro and control make it a bit harder for opponents to pin down. And, as new scales and hatebear cards are printed the deck is pretty easy to keep up-to-date.
Thanks for dropping by! ʕ•ᴥ•ʔﾉ"
Now, what are you waiting for? Our bears are getting hangry...
ʕʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕ•͡-•ʔʔʕʕ•͡-•ʔʔ
This is where I organize cards I've considered but not used. Tier 1 are almost there, tier 2 a bit off, tier 3 not so much. It's used for a) exploring new angles or answers to meta shifts and b) finding Modern equivalents so I can port the deck if I ever get around to it.
Tier 1: Aether Vial, Agatha's Soul Cauldron, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, Cankerbloom, Cavern of Souls, Cenn's Tactician, Court of Garenbrig, Citywide Bust, Drannith Ruins, Dusk Legion Duelist, Eladamri's Call, Ethersworn Canonist, Evolution Witness, Generous Pup, Gift of the Viper, Haywire Mite, Hopeful Initiate, Hushbringer, Innkeeper's Talent, Legolas's Quick Reflexes, Lion Sash, Maester Seymour, Mana Tithe, Mother of Runes, Myr Scrapling, Narnam Renegade, Revitalizing Repast
, Orim's Chant, Outland Liberator
, Pawpatch Recruit, Pendelhaven, Phyrexian Revoker, Power Conduit, Requisition Raid, Retribution of the Meek, Snakeskin Veil, Spike Weaver, Voice of Victory, Epochrasite, Benevolent Hydra
Tier 2: Avatar of the Resolute, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Wooded Bastion, Worldly TutorGC, Sovereign Okinec Ahau, Swarm Shambler, Serra Paragon, Slaughter the Strong, Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants, Ajani, Sleeper Agent, Allosaurus Shepherd, Anointed Peacekeeper, Arwen, Mortal Queen, Branchloft Pathway
, Augur of Autumn, Burrenton Forge-Tender, Cathar Commando, Gavony Township, Mikaeus, the Lunarch, Razorverge Thicket, Mosquito Guard, Galadriel's Dismissal, Fight as One, Invasion of Gobakhan
, Lion Umbra, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, Dromoka's Command, Nature's Chosen, Oracle en-Vec, Wildborn Preserver, Savage Summoning, Bow of Nylea, Primordial Hydra, Harper Recruiter
Tier 3: Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender, The Mycosynth Gardens, The Wandering Rescuer, Vexing Shusher, Warden of the Inner Sky, Witchstalker, Selfless Samurai, Selfless Spirit, Shinewend, Arcane Lighthouse, Sanctifier en-Vec, Break Ties, Runed Halo, Ornery Tumblewagg, Hamza, Guardian of Arashin, Masako the Humorless, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Fiendslayer Paladin, Fauna Shaman, Unbounded Potential, Constable of the Realm, Judge's Familiar
