[Standard] Mono Green Stompy (shouted out by WoTC in ban announcement) in Arena Champ Qualifier: [6-3]

Decklist from Standard Challenge (2nd place) by Elvin7

Well, I decided to play the deck WoTC mentioned as a possible sleeper in the meta in their recent ban and restricted announcement. I didn't really play it because WoTC mentioned it as a possible contender, although it was what made me aware of the list. I just wanted to play something novel for the ACQ, my brief testing went well, and it unexpectedly felt really solid vs. Vivi, which I expected to be a huge portion ofthe ACQ field.

Sure enough, I went 4-0 against Vivi in the tournament, with most of those being 2-0s. The deck truly does feel good against Vivi, which has trouble with Keen-Eyed Curator and quick pressure backed by protection spells. Surrak, Baloth, Sentinel, and Ouroboroid felt like a good threat suite vs. them. It also has some cheesy wins with hemosymbiotic mite that people don't expect. The innkeeper's talents + pump spells let you continue attacking even as they grow their board and you can punish them if they get too aggressive.

If you don't draw curators game 1 and they have a sick draw, you can of course lose, but even when they do go hard, they sometimes die to a random giant growth + tifa's limit break on a big trampler that they didn't expect.

I was happy with the 6-3 finish, though of course I would have loved to get one more win and qualify for day 2 (started out 5-0, too). The deck performed well vs. Vivi (4-0) and Dimir (2-0), but lost to red (0-2) and kona omniscience (0-1). Those MUs also felt like they went about as expected. The omni matchup felt abysmal, although they did have turn 4 kona omniscience in both games I lost, I imagine they're pretty good at setting that up. Removal for omniscience wasn't good enough, you need something to kill kona at instant speed, which I had no way of doing. I am sure I went above expectation going 4-0 vs. Vivi, but the deck did feel solid vs. them, and post board it feels even better.

Do I actually think this deck could help shift the meta as WoTC hopes? Honestly, probably not, but maybe... it did feel like I was favored against Dimir and Vivi. However, for it to truly shift the meta, I think the list needs to be better vs. red somehow. It doesn't seem like it should be that bad, but it really felt awful, and my SB didn't feel like it had much for the MU. Seems like we have slots to work with (Railway Brawler felt somewhat pointless, unless I'm missing something) so I would be really interested to hear what folks think could be nice for the red MU.

Last thing I'll mention is this is the type of deck that requires some pretty careful piloting. I had quite a few games where I needed to set up for a "combo" finish w/my pump and protection spells to win, and where the margin of victory was very small. Navigating when to hold up protection and how to play around interaction from your opponent is not trivial, and some of the lines with multiple mites aren't easy to see. Not as tricky as playing Vivi cauldron mirrors perfectly, but still trickier than you might think.