Two weeks ago I gave out a few tips on how to evaluate build-around-me cards so I figured it would be fun to actually build around a card this week! I chose to ignore my own advice and invest valuable life energy into building around Hardened Scales. This card is almost certainly a trap when it comes to competitive play… but it just seems so darned fun if it all works and I love +1/+1 counters. Follow me as I embark on a likely fruitless deck building gambit.
The first step to building around a card is determining which format you want to build for. I usually start this particular bit of soul searching with a visit to Gatherer, MTG’s card database. Gatherer allows you to search every card in MTG history based on a wide variety of useful parameters and it saves a ton of time during deck building. A cursory glance at Gatherer reveals that there have been a few mechanics that play around with +1/+1 counters in the last two years. Heroic, Monstrous, and Outlast each represent a potential hub of +1/+1 counter shenanigans. Hardened Scales adds one extra +1/+1 counter every time a creature would get a +1/+1 counter; as a result, the route to maximum value is lined with as many instances of adding +1/+1 counters as possible.
Based on the particular strengths of Hardened Scales, Monstrous does not really fit the ideal use-case. Monstrous creatures can only ever become monstrous once and when they do they tend to naturally grow to size 6/6 or above, at which point an extra +1/+1 counter is just a teensy bit of overkill rather than a huge value bump. On top of the size issue, there is also a cost issue with Monstrous creatures as they tend to cost 4 mana or more to play and 5 or more mana to activate Monstrous. If you are planning to drop and detonate monster bombs, you probably can’t afford to play too many of them per game. As a result, Hardened Scales just won’t be able to trigger more than once or twice a game. That’s not a good return on investment for a build-around-me-card that does nothing on its own.
Now that we’ve ruled out Monstrous, let’s look at Outlast. Outlast requires that you pay mana and tap down your creatures in order to give them one +1/+1 counter per activation. There is some repeatability built into Outlast and Hardened Scales effectively doubles the return on investment of Outlasting your creatures, so far so good. Also on the plus side most outlast creatures provide bonuses to every creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it. Making all of your +1/+1 counter-havers fly or trample is a pretty good way to finish an opponent off, especially when Outlast is giving you twice as much boom for the ordinary amount of buck. Unfortunately, Outlast is a horribly slow mechanic! In a perfect world you will play Hardened Scales on turn 1 of every game and even in that world you won’t see any real improvement in your creatures until turn 4 as your curve would look like this: turn 1->Play Scales, turn 2-> Play Outlast creature, turn 3-> use Outlast, turn 4-> do something with your slightly beefier Outlast dude. In the case I’ve outlined I’ve spent 3 turns to make ONE creature gain an extra +1/+1 counter and if I want to keep growing that creature I need to invest more turns and mana into it at sorcery speed. The Outlast strategy is a recipe for a blowout. Imagine outlasting a creature 3 times and then having that creature bounced or killed. That is what is going to happen with the Outlast strategy…every time. If your opponent is awake and sentient they will stop the slow and ponderous march of an outlast creature or two. Alas, Outlast is also not the mechanic we want.
It all falls to Heroic then and who better than a hero to save this questionable deck idea? Most Heroic creatures gain +1/+1 counters whenever you target them with a spell. That’s a nice, big, broad case where you can repeatedly extract some value from Hardened Scales. Between the plentiful auras from Theros and the easily scalable Strive spells, as well as some Heroic enablers of both (hi Hero of Iroas and Battlefield Thaumaturge), it is pretty easy to repeatedly trigger Heroic on a regular basis. On top of that, Hardened Scales adds an extra +1/+1 counter to a creature for each time a +1/+1 counter would be added. This means that you can get some bonus value by targeting your Heroic creatures with spells that create +1/+1 counters. Ordeals provide twice as many counters per attack! Nature’s Panoply adds 4 counters to a Heroic creature rather than 2! Don’t even get me started with Solidarity of Heroes. What was that? You want me to get started with Solidarity of Heroes? You sure? Ok then, Solidarity of Heroes is pretty darn nasty with Hardened Scales and Heroic since the initial Heroic trigger on something like Hero of Iroas will create 2 +1/+1 counters rather than 1, at which point Solidarity of Heroes will double those counters and Hardened Scales will trigger again. The end result of this interaction is that a naked Hero of Iroas can suit up with 5 +1/+1 counters for the measly cost of targeting it with a 2 mana Solidarity of Heroes. It gets even nastier if Hero of Iroas is wearing pants before Solidarity of Heroes comes along. Now that’s some value! On the down side, all of these Heroic interactions require you to play cards that rely on you having a creature in play to do anything good. So the barrier to fun in this case is having Hardened Scales, a Heroic creature, and a spell that can target said creature. That is not a completely unreasonable setup; but, it is certainly an inconsistent set of circumstances, especially against control decks. The Heroic Scales deck would be fun, but there are just too many ifs built into its equation to be reliable.
It is beginning to look like Standard might not be the place for Hardened Scales so let’s have a look at Modern! I’m not going to list every potential +1/+1 counter mechanic we could build around since there are just so many, but I will zoom in on the free ones: Modular and Graft. Modular creatures are 0/0 artifact creatures that come into play with +1/+1 counters and then transfer those counters to another artifact creature when they die. As a result, Modular creatures present two built in opportunities for Hardened Scales to work its magic: when they enter play and when they die. Since Modular creatures play very nicely with affinity, particularly the ever-nasty Arcbound Ravager, Modular presents a very nice opportunity to abuse Hardened Scales. Now a Modular + Hardened Scales deck probably wouldn’t want to be 100% pedal to the floor aggressive since Ravager Affinity already fills that niche using similar cards. Adding Hardened Scales to Ravager Affinity just couldn’t make it faster: it already kills on turn 3 or 4 regularly. However, if we make the deck a little more resilient and grindy we might find a new artifact angle. I haven’t found the right build for this style of affinity yet, but it might be worth exploring. I think some combination of Proliferate, Modular, and Affinity could make for a fun shell around a Hardened Scales heart.
Graft functions similarly to Modular in that creatures with Graft are 0/0 creatures that come into play with +1/+1 counters. However, Graft creatures can transfer one of their +1/+1 counters onto any creature that enters the battlefield after them. This allows Graft creatures to spread their +1/+1 counter love to every creature you play subsequently. Furthermore, Hardened Scales triggers whenever a Graft creature enters the battlefield and it triggers for each time you Graft a +1/+1 counter onto another creature. That allows a sequence of play like this: turn 1-> Hardened Scales, turn 2-> Simic Initiate + Simic Initiate (each comes in with 2 +1/+1 counters), turn 3 -> Aquastrand Spider + Graft from each initiate. The end result of that play would be two 1/1 initiates and a 7/7 spider (2+1 counters from its natural Graft and 1+1 counters from each Graft from an initiate). Though a deck based on Graft and +1/+1 counter shenanigans would not be the most resilient deck in the world, it would compete for most fun. I advise getting the other Simic mechanic, Evolve, involved for even more fun. Evolve produces even more +1/+1 counters in nice, free, regular intervals and Hardened Scales-charged Graft creatures can easily spur your Evolve creatures to grow up. Unfortunately you cannot use Graft to make a creature that is entering the battlefield big enough to trigger Evolve since Graft and Evolve both trigger on a creature entering the battlefield. So that’s a bummer. I’ll post a list of my U/G Graft/Evolve deck in my next post and break down my card choices.
I hope this post shed a little light on how to approach deck building from scratch. It is always easier to build off of someone else’s work when building an MTG Deck. However, there is something truly satisfying to nurturing your own deck idea and growing it from some kernel of a thought to a world beater. I recommend trying it!
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