This deck came about because my previous attempts at a Golgari deck were unsuccessful. Namely my The Gitrog Monster deck. I really liked the deck, and it worked very well, but it essentially turned into a combo deck so every game played out the same.
As such, I took it apart and have not had a Green/Black deck for a while. A little while back, I decided to pick up a Black Sun's Zenith as I thought it would work well in a Hapatra deck so I decided to put her together. After looking through all the card options, I found out that there were a lot of options that work well with Hapatra. To start, here is the list I am currently running:
A lot of cards work well with the -1/-1 theme. I included things like Black Sun's Zenith, Soul Snuffers, and Lockjaw Snapper that can put counters on a lot of things at once. Quillspike allows me to remove counters from my creatures if I need to.
Overall, the theme is pump out a bunch of tokens and swing. Generous Patron is good to draw cards when adding counters to my opponent's creatures and a few other cards just offer utility, such as ramp, recursion, etc. to keep everything running.
I have not played it often, but so far it seems to be doing what I want it to. It is a deck that gets to be aggressive and swarm the board which can sometimes be tough for my opponent's to deal with.
Since it is a fairly new deck, I am sure there are some cards that will ultimately need to be cut, but as it is now, I really like the way the deck plays.
I was playing this deck last Wednesday and I just wanted to summarize a game I had more so for a play an opponent made rather than me because it was pretty good.
I started the game pretty decently in that I got Hapatra down turn 2 and on turn 3 I swung at Player 2 to kill Player 3's Blood Artist to get a Snake. I was able to continue dealing damage to each opponent to deal with a variety of X/1's for a couple turns anyway. I ended up with 3 Snakes, a Scavenging Ooze (which was really helpful as one deck was reliant on the graveyard), a Bontu the Glorified, a Carnifex Demon, and a couple other creatures. I activated Carnifex Demon to give me 8 Snake tokens. I then activated it again to give me 14 Snake tokens (the original 8 died but I got 8 to replace them). I was going to drop Seshiro the Anointed to alpha strike them as I was creating all of these in the end stop of the player before me. However, the player playing Admiral Beckett Brass cast Crafty Cutpurse before any of Hapatra's triggers resolved. This gave them all of my Snakes (and I no longer had Hapatra since she had 2 counters on her). They ended up attacking me and I was able to hold them off for a turn with Spike Weaver. Luckily, I was able to scry into a Chainer, Dementia Master with Bontu so I cast that next turn and reanimated the Demon to kill all the tokens my opponent stole from me. I now no longer had any tokens, but I was able to beat down with Bontu and the Demon to help close out the game.
As much as it hurt my plan, I did enjoy the play of Crafty Cutpurse against me. I thought it was a smart play on their part to wait for me to get more tokens out of the Demon (which killed Hapatra) and it was not a card I expected to worry about.
As of now, this deck doesn't come out very often but I do enjoy the playstyle more than any other BG deck I have had in the past. Being BG and having Jund and Abzan decks means that there is a large potential for a lot of overlap in cards and playstyles. However, Hapatra is unique enough that it never feels like I am doing something that another color combination is also doing (I was mostly worried about the similarities in play with Karador) so that is a plus.
As of now, there are no cards that I feel are ineffective or superfluous. Everything seems to be pulling its weight very well. The only thing I can think that might be missing is another Wrath effect. The -1/-1 counters theme takes care of most of it, but I might decide I need a true wrath (most like Toxic Deluge) in case I get really far behind and counters are not enough to clean up the board.
As such, I took it apart and have not had a Green/Black deck for a while. A little while back, I decided to pick up a Black Sun's Zenith as I thought it would work well in a Hapatra deck so I decided to put her together. After looking through all the card options, I found out that there were a lot of options that work well with Hapatra. To start, here is the list I am currently running:
1 Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons
Lands
1 Bayou
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Diamond Valley
11 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Grim Backwoods
1 High Market
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Maze of Ith
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Phyrexian Tower
9 Swamp
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Winding Canyons
1 Woodland Cemetery
Enchantments
1 Attrition
1 Blowfly Infestation
1 Crumbling Ashes
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Flourishing Defenses
1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
1 Nest of Scarabs
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Acidic Slime
1 Agent of Erebos
1 Archfiend of Depravity
1 Bontu the Glorified
1 Burnished Hart
1 Butcher of Malakir
1 Carnifex Demon
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Chainer, Dementia Master
1 Corrosive Mentor
1 Dusk Urchins
1 Eternal Witness
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Fertilid
1 Hex Parasite
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Lockjaw Snapper
1 Midnight Banshee
1 Necroskitter
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Obelisk Spider
1 Phyrexian Plaguelord
1 Plaguemaw Beast
1 Protean Hulk
1 Quillspike
1 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Regal Force
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Seedguide Ash
1 Seshiro the Anointed
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Soul Snuffers
1 Spike Weaver
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Viscera Seer
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Wood Elves
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
1 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Contagion Engine
1 Skullclamp
1 Whispersilk Cloak
Instants
1 Constant Mists
1 Crop Rotation
1 Grim Affliction
Sorceries
1 Black Sun's Zenith
A lot of cards work well with the -1/-1 theme. I included things like Black Sun's Zenith, Soul Snuffers, and Lockjaw Snapper that can put counters on a lot of things at once. Quillspike allows me to remove counters from my creatures if I need to.
Overall, the theme is pump out a bunch of tokens and swing. Generous Patron is good to draw cards when adding counters to my opponent's creatures and a few other cards just offer utility, such as ramp, recursion, etc. to keep everything running.
I have not played it often, but so far it seems to be doing what I want it to. It is a deck that gets to be aggressive and swarm the board which can sometimes be tough for my opponent's to deal with.
Since it is a fairly new deck, I am sure there are some cards that will ultimately need to be cut, but as it is now, I really like the way the deck plays.
I started the game pretty decently in that I got Hapatra down turn 2 and on turn 3 I swung at Player 2 to kill Player 3's Blood Artist to get a Snake. I was able to continue dealing damage to each opponent to deal with a variety of X/1's for a couple turns anyway. I ended up with 3 Snakes, a Scavenging Ooze (which was really helpful as one deck was reliant on the graveyard), a Bontu the Glorified, a Carnifex Demon, and a couple other creatures. I activated Carnifex Demon to give me 8 Snake tokens. I then activated it again to give me 14 Snake tokens (the original 8 died but I got 8 to replace them). I was going to drop Seshiro the Anointed to alpha strike them as I was creating all of these in the end stop of the player before me. However, the player playing Admiral Beckett Brass cast Crafty Cutpurse before any of Hapatra's triggers resolved. This gave them all of my Snakes (and I no longer had Hapatra since she had 2 counters on her). They ended up attacking me and I was able to hold them off for a turn with Spike Weaver. Luckily, I was able to scry into a Chainer, Dementia Master with Bontu so I cast that next turn and reanimated the Demon to kill all the tokens my opponent stole from me. I now no longer had any tokens, but I was able to beat down with Bontu and the Demon to help close out the game.
As much as it hurt my plan, I did enjoy the play of Crafty Cutpurse against me. I thought it was a smart play on their part to wait for me to get more tokens out of the Demon (which killed Hapatra) and it was not a card I expected to worry about.
As of now, this deck doesn't come out very often but I do enjoy the playstyle more than any other BG deck I have had in the past. Being BG and having Jund and Abzan decks means that there is a large potential for a lot of overlap in cards and playstyles. However, Hapatra is unique enough that it never feels like I am doing something that another color combination is also doing (I was mostly worried about the similarities in play with Karador) so that is a plus.
As of now, there are no cards that I feel are ineffective or superfluous. Everything seems to be pulling its weight very well. The only thing I can think that might be missing is another Wrath effect. The -1/-1 counters theme takes care of most of it, but I might decide I need a true wrath (most like Toxic Deluge) in case I get really far behind and counters are not enough to clean up the board.