Green White Counters. Managorger going to be huge! It may be possible to run Nykthos in this deck for green devotion as well.
Main Combo's: 4 of cards that are essential: You want a set or similar in your starting hand of a few of these cards to play off of:
-
Managorger Hydra - Gets real big real fast. Can easily avoid removal from spells like
Bile Blight by triggering cheap spells on the stack. Will always allow you to draw a card and get an indestructible creature with
Inspiring Call.
-
Hardened Scales - Huge synergy with
Managorger Hydra, Dramoka's Command and
Ajani, Mentor of heroes.
- Dramoka's Command - Huge synergy with
Hardened Scales and works well with Abzhan Battlepriest (trigger
Lifelink from counters and have two creatures fight for removal and life swing)
Other 4 of cards: Cards that work well in your starting hand:
-
Fleecemane Lion - It's a 3/3 for 2 mana that becomes a 4/4 hexproof indestructible monster (what else is there to say?). Also works well with
Hardened Scales.
-
Elvish Mystic - Basic ramp creature / chump blocker. Doesn't become useless if you get it late as it can be a cheap pump for
Managorger Hydra.
Secondary Combo's and Protection: 3 of cards: You should only use these cards as 3 of cards because they do you no good in your opening hand. These are cards that you want to draw into to as to not
diminish your ramp or board presence:
- Abzhan Battlepriest - This is your mid range trump card. You want to draw into this due to it's higher mana cost and you won't need it until you get a couple creatures with counters on them. Cast this and swing for a huge life swing with
Lifelink on your creatures with counters.
-
Solidarity of Heroes - Huge synergy with
Managorger Hydra and
Hardened Scales (gets +5/+5 if you cast this spell with one
Hardened Scales on the battlefield).
-
Inspiring Call - Works extremely well with
Managorger Hydra. Gives you an indestructible Blocker and you will draw at least one card. You usually want a couple creatures with counters on them before you canst this so it's something you want to draw into and not have in your starting hand. With a lot of low cast creatures this should be used to keep your cards readily available.
-
Gods Willing - This should protect against a lot of things and it has Scry 1 (and still pumps your
Managorger Hydra's while protecting them). Ran into a lot of problems with blue / black decks destroying my creatures, especially once I reached midrange and invested a little into each creature.
Misc cards: Cards used as trump cards or saving graces once you get into mid range or later:
-
Ajani, Mentor of heroes - Works well with
Hardened Scales. If you have 3 creatures, all of a sudden they are AT LEAST 3/3 creatures Using his +1 ability. The enemy usually has to deal with Ajani as well due to his 100 life gain ultimate a few turns later giving you an extra 5 health or so.
-
Woodland Bellower - A pretty amazing card that can save you if you've been hit by a board wipe. Allows you to fetch a Managorger or Fleecemane to put right onto the battlefield causing a lot of
havoc.
Sideboard:
- Most cards here are idea cards or cards that worked well but had to be removed for certain Meta's.
-7/23/15 Edit: Removed
Servant of the Scale and replaced with
Elvish Mystic's; Removed
Collected Company (2) and
See the Unwritten and added
Gods Willing to protect my
Managorger Hydra's and other pumped creatures (had issues with black removal without the protection and the 3 mana cost
Inspiring Call wasn't reliable at that cost);
https://deck.tk/1Kgw36jcI literally put
Gods Willing in my deck to stop Blue/Black from crushing me and it made it impossible for them to touch me with both
Gods Willing and
Inspiring Call. You should run either a graveyard morph with
deathmist raptor and
den protector or a counters deck with
hardened scales and
managorger hydra in my opinion though. You need to differentiate in there too make it more fluid. If you want, instead of running
collected company, you can run
Genesis Hydra and be able to play almost anything off of 5 mana. The ability on the
genesis hydra also counts as a 'cast' for
managorger hydra instead of the
collected company 'put into battlefield'