It always feels good to do well in a big event, but even better when you get to do so with a deck that's a bit off the radar!

This past weekend I took 2nd place in the Insight Esports $5,000 Standard Open out of 115 players with a Mono-Green Stompy deck originally played by MTGO user TeteRD. While the deck is aggressively slanted, it's much less of a simple-minded aggro deck and much more of a, well, Big Green Machine!

Time Stamps:

00:04:38 - Match 1

00:21:27 - Match 2

00:30:47 - Match 3

00:40:40 - Match 4

01:01:49 - Match 5

Big Green Machine | STX Standard | Jim Davis

• Creatures (27)
• 2 Scavenging Ooze
• 2 Tangled Florahedron
• 2 Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
• 3 Questing Beast
• 3 Stonecoil Serpent
• 3 Swarm Shambler
• 4 Gemrazer
• 4 Kazandu Mammoth
• 4 Lovestruck Beast

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Garruk, Unleashed
• 1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate

• Instants (2)
• 2 Snakeskin Veil

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Primal Might

• Artifacts (3)
• 3 The Great Henge

• Lands (22)
• 16 Snow-Covered Forest
• 3 Castle Garenbrig
• 3 Faceless Haven

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Chainweb Aracnir
• 2 Garruk's Harbinger
• 2 Garruk, Unleashed
• 2 Kogla, the Titan Ape
• 2 Ram Through
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Shadowspear
• 1 Snakeskin Veil
• 1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate
• 1 Wilt

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Green has been one of the best colors in Magic and in Standard in the last few years because it can do basically everything at this point.

You need to draw cards? Kill Creatures? Deal with graveyards? Deal with artifacts and enchantments? Block well? Attack well? Green can do it all! The ability to kill quickly as well as go long is huge in Standard, as decks like Sultai Ultimatum force you to be able to win the game before they cast their marquee card, but decks like Mono-Red Aggro and various Adventure decks require you to be able to have some defense and late game push as well.

Gemrazer is also an absolute all-star in the deck, as not only are many of the format's best cards artifacts and enchantments, but also being phenomenal with the deck's small +1/+1 counter subtheme. When you mutate onto a Stonecoil Serpent or Swarm Shambler you get to keep the +1/+1 counters on top of the 4/4, meaning you can often attack for six on turn three with a creature that is immune to Eliminate, Heartless Act, and in the case of Stonecoil Serpent, Drown the Loch and Binding the Old Gods.

The deck has performed very well for me on the ladder as well, so if you love going big it's a great big green light in a somewhat stale Standard format!