Dreadhorde Butchers love it when their Scales get Hardened! (M:tGO Pioneer League)

Revisiting a concept I tried out a few months ago, but a much better build this time I think. Aaah the halcyon days of Ravnica Allegiance when Standard was fun! Each color combination had unique and fun mechanics that were actually competitively viable (mostly)! This is part 1000 roughly of my attempts to make Dreadhorde Butcher good in older formats! Something about the card is just so satisfying to me. The way that it can run away with the game on its own if not answered immediately, the fact that it can wallop our opponents' faces, posing to them the conundrum of take its attack and die or remove it and die! Dreadhorde Butchers love to pile on those +1/+1 counters, and what better way to do this than with Hardened Scales effects! The namesake enchantment along with Winding Constrictors and the new Ozolith will make sure that our Butchers' demise will also spell our opponents' doom! We'll utilize other pieces of course that synergize with the plan like Stonecoil Serpent, Scavenging Ooze and Gruul Spellbreaker. Special guest appearance by Rhythm of the Wild, another real fav of mine! And, of course, we're Jund, so we'll back up our plan with all the Fatal Pushes, Thoughtseizes and Assassins Trophies we need to get those Butchers in there! But can a plan like this really work in a super powered (and exile removal heavy!) Pioneer metagame? Let's find out!
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Decklist
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blightstep Pathway/Searstep Pathway
1 Blood Crypt
2 Blooming Marsh
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
2 Copperline Gorge
1 Cragcrown Pathway/Timbercrown Pathway
1 Darkbore Pathway/Slitherbore Pathway
4 Dreadhorde Butcher
2 Fatal Push
1 Field of Ruin
3 Gruul Spellbreaker
4 Hardened Scales
2 Inti, Seneschal of the Sun
1 Karplusan Forest
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Long Goodbye
2 Mishra's Research Desk
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Ozolith, the Shattered Spire
1 Restless Cottage
2 Rhythm of the Wild
1 Riveteers Charm
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sheoldred's Edict
2 Snakeskin Veil
1 Stomping Ground
4 Stonecoil Serpent
1 Sulfurous Springs
1 Swamp
4 Thoughtseize
2 Winding Constrictor
2 Ziatora's Proving Ground
2 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Duress
1 Erebos's Intervention
2 Go Blank
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Necromentia
2 Pick Your Poison
2 Pithing Needle
2 Scavenging Ooze
Timestamps
0:00 Intro and Deck Tech
9:39 Match 1 vs. Dimir Control
28:19 Match 2 vs. Mono W Humans
38:19 Match 3 vs. UW Control
1:02:19 Match 4 vs. UW Control
1:34:49 Match 5 vs. Greasefang
1:49:47 Final Thoughts

[@carolvaughan5600]

A better deck with an interesting theme. I like it a lot and can’t wait for the next build. 😊

[@tReNhEx100]

I ran this exact deck for 5 matches, won 2, lost 3. One of the problems I ran into was not having black when I needed it, that happened in 3 of the 13 games and both times it resulted in the actual match loss. I went against 3 Rakdos Decks, 2 Vampire Sorin build , 1 Transmorg variation with a Ripper token Sac theme.. I lost 2 of the matches to 1 Vampire, and the transmorg. The other match i won was against Control strangely enough. The other match I lost to was Mono-red. What I learned, the potential is there but with a way to remove the Butcher each time it came down made me sad. The most it ever got was 2 counters and every time it did Long Goodbye, or March of Otherworldly Light Exiled it to bye bye zone. That Sideboard wants Pick your Poison as a 4 of I think. And maybe brotherhoods end .. unfortunately it would kill constrictor but by the time you unleash it to mop up vampires [which also kills Sorin too but] there's that convoke token deck with gleeful demo. Another thing I regretted is not bringing in pithing for Sorin I feel like I messed up hard in that choice and maybe just maybe that cost me the 2nd match against vamps but the shell has major potential if it can be ironed out. Thanks for the content and the cool deck idea. Much appreciated.

[@sshroom7713]

Thank you for the report! It's possible the mana is a little off. My method of building mana bases is pretty unscientific. I just test draw the deck a ton until it seems like the deck is consistently offering the colors needed on time. What you point out is the main problem with Butcher: it needs a couple of turns to get going, which it never gets in a super interactive format. Also, control decks just exile it or bounce it, putting all those tokens you might have built up to waste. Sad but true since it is so sweet if it really gets rolling. Glad you enjoyed it!