http://www.gatheringmagic.com/markwischkaemper-102414-26-decks-in-a-year-episode-5-mono-green/

Green is simple: Ramp, play huge dudes, smash face. Sounds like fun, right? Sometimes, we just want to play Magic the way we did when we first started: Fill up our deck with the biggest creatures we own, slam them on the table, and turn them sideways.
But the days of nothing but 6-drops are behind us. We play grown-up Magic now. We tune our ninety-nine-card stacks with love and tenderness, fill them with answers to problems that first deck would have never noticed, and play to the metagame of our shop or playgroup. But what if we meld those two things? What if we can play giant guys and still answer threats? What if our inner Timmy is actually a bit of a prankster?
Yeva, Nature's Herald
Yeva may not be the most obvious choice—she’s probably not going to win any games on her own—but she gives green a Fighting Chance in the world of answers, where it most often suffers. With some tight play, Yeva can make combat math such a nightmare for your opponents that they just won’t bother attacking you! More than that, she gives us an excuse to play a bunch of creatures we’d probably never play otherwise and do so with a straight face—or a maniacal, childlike grin of joy—as we flash in Stingerfling Spider against an attacking Gisela, Blade of Goldnight.
Mwonvuli Acid-MossOne of the things green does best is pull lands out of its library. We have a good suite of ramp spells here, including spell-based ones like Kodama’s Reach and Ranger’s Path, utility ones like Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, and creature-based ones like Wood Elves and Seedguide Ash. (We also have the underplayed Frontier Guide, which can use extra mana turn after turn.) My theory here is that every ramp spell you cast should leave you up at least one card in card advantage; finding us two lands, blowing up an opponent’s land, and leaving a creature behind all do that. Rampant Growth may be cheap, but isn’t worth it in this build! A few favorite utility lands are here, too—Khalni Garden is, as far as I’m concerned, worth running in every deck running green, the cycling lands are great early or late, and Encroaching Wastes and Mystifying Maze both answer problems while simultaneously giving us mana. Finally, Explorer’s Scope, equipped to any of our various big dudes (or even our little dudes), will push our ramp ahead even further while doing what we do best: attacking.
And we’ll want to attack with some large creatures, so to do that, we have to draw them. Fortunately for us, green actually has a lot of card-draw—it just comes in some strange forms. Garruk’s Packleader, Drumhunter, Soul of the Harvest, Masked Admirers, and Primordial Sage will all draw you cards based on creatures—sometimes when you play them, and sometimes when you have them. Soul’s Majesty and Momentous Fall both care about the power of your creatures. Because Momentous Fall requires a sacrifice but is an instant, you can use it in response to a Wrath or removal spell, and it can pull double-duty of saving Yeva from being tucked. Hunter’s Prowess is risky but can be absurd when it hits—an 11/11 trampler that draws you eight cards upon connecting seems worth the risk.
Tornado ElementalMono-green stompy also plays some of the best threats in the business. Tornado Elemental, Moldgraf Monstrosity, and Soul of Zendikar all require answers from the table, while at the same time giving you some effect. There are a bunch more: Terastodon, Paleoloth, the fabulous Avenger of Zendikar, my personal favorite Giant Adephage (flash it in with Yeva at end of turn and attack right away to start making a ton of giant Insect tokens), and the big daddy of all threats Worldspine Wurm. Each of these creatures will make the table take notice—and either respond or, y’know, die. Blowing up permanents, making tokens, or returning things from your graveyard mean even if they do just die, something good came out of it. Beacon of Creation gives us another line of attack, and combined with Paragon of Eternal Wilds, it makes for a serious token threat.
Answers are harder in mono-green though. We do our best with a lot of artifact and enchantment hate, especially tacked on to creatures like Indrik Stomphowler and Reclamation Sage. Staff of Nin does double-duty of drawing cards and pinging things, which can kill random X/1s, but it also helps out in the red zone. Acidic Slime and its little (big?) brother Mold Shambler both take care of troubling permanents, and Bane of Progress will put a serious wrench in the plans of all these artifact decks running around now—the person playing Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient doesn’t deserve to be happy anyway. My catch-all Spine of Ish Sah makes an appearance as an answer to just about everything, and Desert Twister joins it from back in the day, when green did stuff it shouldn’t be allowed to do. (“Destroy any card in play”? Really!?) However, be prepared to make some deals and play some politics—if you can partner with a W/B player so he or she handles creatures and you handle everything else, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
Mimic VatWhat we lack in answers, though, we are able to make up in synergy. We have little ones, such as just about any creature in the deck with Mimic Vat (Thragtusk is kind of the dream, but Eternal Witness, Acidic Slime, and Hornet Queen are all pretty awesome, too), Roaring Primadox serves as a slow Mimic Vat number two, and Eternal Witness and Restock buy back some of our best spells or creatures when they die. Mwonvuli Beast Tracker and Fierce Empath will both search out key creatures when you need one (those are both pretty great on Mimic Vat, too). Bow of Nylea gives us an effect each turn we remember to use it, and it complicates combat math even more by making all our attacking creatures kill whatever blocks them, no matter how big. Hornet Nest and Staff of Nin are hilarious together, making a flying deathtoucher each turn. Brawn does its best work from the ’yard, making all our non-tramplers able to stomp on through. Wolfir Silverheart turns just about anything into a relevant body. Trading Post is its usual, awesome self, comboing with Spine of Ish Sah like a champ, bringing back your Loxodon Warhammer, or just throwing out a chump-blocker (who, by the way, can carry that Hammer). It’s worth noting the incredible synergy between Worldspine Wurm and Trading Post though—sac it in response to a Path to Exile, and you have three trampling 5/5 tokens for the deal, and the big guy himself shuffles right back into your library. Dragon Throne of Tarkir is an excellent new addition that can have some pretty neat effects—if we have some tokens out after a Beacon of Creation and a random Moldgraf Monstrosity, those tokens are suddenly, well, huge and tramply. That seems good.
Finally, we have a couple of truly spectacular spells that will not only often win you the game, but will make the whole table laugh and cheer as they resolve. Praetor’s Counsel is hardly believable at twice the price, but for 8 mana, it’s hard to find a better deal. Don’t be afraid to cast it fairly early in the game as long as you have some reasonable stuff in your ’yard; the card advantage it grants will pull you ahead pretty quickly. Also, you haven’t lived until you’ve Genesis Waved into an Avenger of Zendikar. The army it creates is both formidable and funny—it’s a bunch of walking Plants! It’s worth noting, here, that as the active player, we are able to stack the triggers however we want. So, if we want more Plants, we have our lands come into play first and the Avenger last, so we count all the lands we hit off the wave. If we want bigger Plants, we have Avenger hit first and then let the lands come into play so we gain the counters from Avenger’s landfall trigger.
Because this is a good-stuff list, there were a bunch of things that were considered and cut for any number of reasons. Feel free to do some swapping around with what you have or based on personal preference, but do watch the mana curve—it’s easy for a deck like this to wind up having way too many big-mana plays. Brutalizer Exarch is additional search and semi-removal, but it was just too high on the CMC. Hydra Omnivore, Primordial Hydra, and Polukranos, World Eater were too pricey and didn’t work as well with Genesis Wave, but if you have one, I’d run it for sure—talk about must-answer threats! Engulfing Slagwurm and Pelakka Wurm are both solid choices, but we sometimes have to cut cards we like. Either one could replace Giant Adephage though—Engulfing Slagwurm might actually be a better choice, but I just like the big Insect.
Perilous VaultI also played with a deathtouch-plus-reach theme—with Yeva, all the 2-mana Spiders with those two abilities kind of turn into Doom Blades. I ended up deciding I’d rather not clutter the list and just recommend you team up with someone to kill the player with all the flyers first.
If you want to spend a bit more, or if happen to have some extras of these around, I’d seriously consider a few of the colorless Wraths—Perilous Vault isn’t too pricey, and All Is Dust, Nevinyrral’s Disk, and Oblivion Stone all could do good work in a deck like this. Asceticism and Nylea, God of the Hunt are both solid adds as well; protection and abilities for your team are well worth it. Genesis is awesome in any deck that can support it, as is Woodfall Primus (again, awesome on a Mimic Vat), and Seedborn Muse, the godfather (godmother?) of all groan-worthy cards, would be really spectacular here.
I’m also curious—what do you all think of Tower of Fortunes in a list like this? I had it in, and my editor cut it, I think correctly. Any other changes you’d make?
This deck will lose at least as much as it will win. We have no combo to close out the game, and our win cons are all giant dudes crashing into the red zone. But it will always be fun, will always be fair, and should always remind us why we started playing this game in the first place.
Total cost: $73.10