When The Great Henge was spoiled we immediately recognized its potential and brewed up a Mono-Green Stompy deck with it. However, black provides a bit more interaction as well as the creature with the best power-to-mana ratio for The Great Henge in Standard: Rotting Regisaur.
Golgari Henge Decklist
[expand title=”Golgari Henge (Arena Formatted Decklist)”]
2 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
10 Forest (XLN) 277
4 Murderous Rider (ELD) 97
4 Once Upon a Time (ELD) 169
4 Overgrown Tomb (GRN) 253
4 Paradise Druid (WAR) 171
4 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
4 Questing Beast (ELD) 171
4 Rotting Regisaur (M20) 111
3 Swamp (XLN) 269
4 Temple of Malady (M20) 254
4 The Great Henge (ELD) 161
4 Lovestruck Beast (ELD) 165
3 Voracious Hydra (M20) 200
2 Vivien, Arkbow Ranger (M20) 199
1 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
1 Finale of Eternity (WAR) 91
1 Voracious Hydra (M20) 200
1 God-Eternal Rhonas (WAR) 163
1 Biogenic Ooze (RNA) 122
1 Golgari Findbroker (GRN) 175
1 God-Eternal Bontu (WAR) 92
1 Cavalier of Night (M20) 94
1 Gruesome Scourger (M20) 104
1 Massacre Girl (WAR) 99
1 Thorn Mammoth (ELD) 323
1 End-Raze Forerunners (RNA) 124
1 Underrealm Lich (GRN) 211
1 Izoni, Thousand-Eyed (GRN) 180
1 Molderhulk (GRN) 190
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Rotting Regisaur is a very powerful creature on its own, but it enables an awesome curve with The Great Henge. Since your 3-drop has 7 power, The Great Henge can be cast on turn 4 for just two mana. You can then cast any 4-drop in the deck, but if you’ve also drawn a Growth-Chamber Guardian you can cast it as a 3/3, draw a card, and immediately search up another copy and cast it to keep the chain going.
These beasts from Throne of Eldraine are our backup plan for making The Great Henge castable if we haven’t found Rotting Regisaur. Questing Beast is proving to be an all-star in this format, showing up in pretty much any aggressive or midrange decks that can cast it. One keyword or another is likely to be relevant against different decks, but right now it seems that one of the most useful abilities is the evasion against small creatures, since the Bant Field of the Dead deck seems to be at the top of the metagame. Questing Beast can simply attack through any number of zombie tokens and even snipe down a Teferi while killing the opponent. Lovestruck Beast is perhaps less vital to the strategy since it can be difficult to attack with it in this particular list, but it gives us some ways to fill the curve early on while having an excellent power-to-mana cost ratio.
If you read a lot of our posts, you might be getting sick of us extolling the virtues of Once Upon a Time over and over, but once again it’s true here. We’re running a variety of creatures that can have drastically different effects or desirability depending upon the game state, so we get to include much more flexibility in our deck and even improve our manabase. The awkwardness of drawing the second copy is diminished in this deck, since we have a low curve naturally and The Great Henge provides an excess of mana after the first turn or two of it being in play.
Vivien, Arkbow Ranger is a cool option for this sort of strategy. It gives us some more interaction while also letting us grow any random creature large enough to cast our Legendary artifact easily. The trample ability is hugely relevant on one of our fatties like Rotting Regisaur. Its ultimate is also relatively easy to achieve and lets us include a wide variety of sideboard options. We’ve included a few interesting options in our list above, though if you’re not playing best of 1 you probably don’t need to devote that many slots to the package.
Murderous Rider and Voracious Hydra round us out with the interaction that we need to truly call ourselves a midrange strategy. They are both powerful interactive creatures on their own, but we still get to keep our nontoken creature count high when we’re chaining together draws with The Great Henge. Voracious Hydra can randomly become a huge creature if casting Henge is the goal, and Murderous Rider’s body actually becomes quite relevant as a 3/4 lifelink creature.
Check out this video with us enjoying a few quick wins with this deck on Arena:
