This is a list trying to emulate a quirky modern deck I saw a while back. It was essentially using a combination of evolve and undying cards both empowered by the application of friendly fire from Pongify cards. It could easilly have a 2/2, a 3/3 and a 3/4 flier in play on turn two with just two lands. The deck had some reasonable redundancy as well making these kinds of massive openers not that improbable. While quite cute the deck never had any real impact on modern, it is a very fair Simic aggro deck after all. I didn't expect it to be much of a thing in cube either for those reasons and more. Having only one Young Wolf in your 40 makes the deck a lot less good at the busted openers and generally reduces the value of your Pongify cards. This list needed more one and two drops that do good things when they are destroyed and there isn't that much out there to fill those gaps. Ultimately it is going to wind up taking the deck in a slightly different direction.
Two things pulled me towards this archetype. Firstly it seems like a fantastic home for the new Incongruity // Incubation spell (even thought it doesn't actually support the Pongify synergies directly) which I went on at length about in my initial review as to why I was so excited by it. Secondly, you get to run Pongify and Rapid Hybridization in a deck that has alternate uses for them. As such this is the first viable looking Simic deck I have seen which has some decent cheap removal options. Lack of removal has been the bane of both blue and green aggressive decks and this list might have a solution to that. That is basically the premise of this deck, just a way of playing the removal options Simic has while mitigating the drawbacks of those removal cards. It looked really impressive when I made the first few additions, it would have been a fearsome 15 card highlander list. After that point the list needed something else to be doing as we had run out of the good cards to support the first thing! The obvious thing was Hardened Scales what with our colour pairings and initial selection of creatures. Sadly there is also a bit of negative synergy going on with that marriage of synergies. The counters theme worked and did some powerful things but it probably isn't the only thing you can do with this and might not even be the most powerful. Here was my list;
Pongify
Rapid Hybridization
Incongruity // Incubation
Hardened Scales
Young Wolf
Experiment One
Pelt Collector
Cloudfin Raptor
Servant of the Scale
Veteran Explorer
Noble Hierarch
Sylvan Safekeeper
Strangleroot Geist
Walking Ballista
Avatar of the Resolute
Simic Charm
Brindle Shoat
Hadana's Climb
Nissa Voice of Zendikar
Rhonas the Indomitable
Rishkar, Peema Renegade
Verdurous Gearhulk
Repeal
Green Sun's Zenith
15 Lands
Dryad Arbor
Simic Duals
A manland or two
Basic Forests and Islands
Perhaps even a Field of Ruin
So what are the things we have resulting from the Pongify cards? We have a couple of bounce spells to deal with 3/3s we might give our opponents. These are reasonable all round cards anyway. Repeal is great against tokens and a fine enough utility card. Simic Charm is rather less good at dealing with tokens but it is a highly versatile utility card that is on theme with the entirety of the deck. We then have our undying dorks which are great early targets for our Pongify cards as per the modern lists. We have Rhonas who we can freely destroy without losing any value. This converts our Pongify into a nice flash one mana 3/3 which is decent. This is a trick from standard back in Theros where Thassa used to eat such things in the blue devotion deck. Sadly Thassa, despite being a better card than Rhonas, is unsuited to this deck.
Lastly we have a number of cards that do useful things when they die. We have Bridle Shoat and Veteran Explorer which have relatively little synergy with the rest of the deck. These probably need at least a Skullclamp to empower them to the point of being good inclusions. Veteran Explorer is very unfair against the decks light on basic land but can be a liability against ones with them and that is certainly most limited decks and a lot of constructed ones too. Hangarback Walker and Servant of the Scale also do things on death and they work nicely with the +1/+1 counters theme of the deck too. This list just needs a Skullclamp! Even Mortarpod wouldn't be a bad include. Either that or I need to tone it down on things like the Brindle Shoat.
Looter il-Kor
Skyrider Elf
Repulse
Jace, Cunning Castaway
Curious Obsession
Siren StormtamerMutagenic Growth
Divedown
Blossoming Defense
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