Gruul Adventures is quite possibly the best deck remaining in Zendikar Rising Standard after the extensive (and much needed) series of bannings. It has many of the powerful aspects that made Temur Adventures such a great deck while packing a more aggressive punch.
Even though Lucky Clover was not lucky enough to survive the banhammer, Edgewall Innkeeper remains one of the most potent card advantage engines in Standard, and it comes at such a low opportunity cost. The adventure creatures in Gruul are good enough that we’d want to play them on their own anyway.
The landfall creature package of Brushfire Elemental and Kazandu Mammoth is a nice addition to this strategy, though there is a certain sense of loss that we never had enough time to explore the crazy turns we could have had with Lucky Clover and Beanstalk Giant. However, the existence of Fabled Passage plus the high density of dual-mode cards mean we have access to the high power level associated with aggressive landfall creatures while having a much lower chance of coming up short when all we need is one more landfall trigger in the later game.
Embercleave and The Great Henge have a track record of being some of the most powerful Mythic Rares in Standard for some time now, and both work perfectly in this deck. We have the ability to go just wide enough to easily cast Embercleave, and our creatures are all extremely potent while holding it. The Great Henge can win a value game all on its own, and it’s incredibly easy to cast even with just a simple landfall creature.
