

Hardened Scales may be the new boogeyman

Number One Owen Turtenwald may have won Grand Prix Houston (with his Rally the Ancestors variant) but the hot new deck in Standard has to be Hardened Scales!

The new version of Hardened Scales takes advantage of Nissa, Voice of Zendikar as a source of +1/+1 counters. Faster than Undergrowth Champion (as Undergrowth Champion is essentially a four drop), the newest Nissa synergizes with namesake Hardened Scales itself, buffs any and all creatures on your side… And even gives the Rally deck fits.

I mean, once you start ticking up Nissa’s [+1] what is the Rally player supposed to do? Their creatures are relatively dorky, so they might have problems getting through the seemingly innocuous 0/1 Plant tokens (believe it or not). They can’t let this go on for very long before, you know, Nissa just goes Ultimate!

What is particularly unusual about the current incarnation of Hardened Scales is how homogenous the deck is. The reality is… There just aren’t that many cards outside a core number that anyone wants to play! So even people who haven’t worked with one another will often end up with seemingly related or even identical lists. This is a representative Hardened Scales list:

Chapman Sim

4 Endless One

4 Hangarback Walker

4 Dromoka’s Command

4 Avatar of the Resolute

4 Hardened Scales

4 Managorger Hydra

4 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

4 Servant of the Scale

4 Abzan Falconer

2 Canopy Vista

2 Flooded Strand

10 Forest

2 Plains

4 Windswept Heath

4 Wooded Foothills

sideboard:

2 Evolutionary Leap

2 Abzan Battle Priest

3 Hallowed Moonlight

2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

2 High Sentinels of Arashin

2 Silkwrap

2 Valorous Stance

Patrick and Michael talk about tons of new and reinvigorated Standard decks in this one, including Jeskai Black, Rally the Ancestors, Standard Eldrazi… And even a Grixis Dragons build! Check them all out in “Hardened Scales is Deceptively Explosive”

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