Heartfire Hero was recently ejected from Magic’s Standard format as part of a 7-card banlist update that no one saw coming. To prepare Standard for rotation coming up in Edge of Eternities, a lot of powerful Standard packages got a card shaved out of them to give room for new cards to see play.
One of the most powerful Standard packages the format has seen for quite a while is the Bloomburrow Mouse package. This package is so powerful that it even rules the roost in Pioneer. Cutting Heartfire Hero has made the deck weaker; however, it’s not down for the count entirely. Now, Mice are back, with a Gruul spin to keep them relevant.
Mice Are Back in MTG
Heartfire Hero may have been banned from Standard, but Emberheart Challenger and Manifold Mouse are still plenty strong. This Gruul Mice deck just had a top 4 and a top 16 placement in Magic Online’s most recent Standard Challenge, proving that the aggressive package is still plenty strong enough to see Standard play.
Of course, this deck is going to adjust for the loss of Emberheart Challenger and Monstrous Rage. The deck’s early variants have turned to Green to do that. Pawpatch Recruit isn’t as strong as Heartfire Hero, but it does profit off of single-target removal from your opponent. That said, you still lose the turn two Double Strike synergy, which is a really big deal.
Overprotect, however, is a very good reason to go into Green. Not only does this combat trick still grant your creatures Trample, but they get a comparable buff to Monstrous Rage, as well as Hexproof from any removal trying to get rid of them. Using two mana to play this, and losing the permanent buff granted by the Monster Role, is the biggest downsides that players have to face, but Overprotect is still a very powerful card.
Otherwise, the usual fixings are all still here. Manifold Mouse and Emberheart Challenger offer both sustained and massive amounts of damage out of nowhere. Hired Claw offers an aggressive threat with scaling damage in multiples. Screaming Nemesis is still very difficult to deal with and, when combined with Self-Destruct, can create combo-like sequences that end the game.
So, while this deck isn’t quite as streamlined as the Red decks of old were, it can still pack a powerful punch. One thing that these decks have over Red, however, is that they can play a bit deeper into the game.
More Sustain
Standard’s current metagame mainly consists of midrange, control, and some combo decks. Aggressive strategies are definitely the outlier at the moment, which makes a lot of sense considering that the archetype’s best tools got nuked out of orbit.
As a result, a bit of sustain goes a long way, and Questing Druid is here to deliver. This is the biggest reason to go Gruul that Standard’s card pool offers. Partnered with a scaling threat, Questing Druid offers some Impulse Draws to go a bit deeper into the game.
The theme of sustainability can also be seen in sideboard choices for this deck. In addition to some extra Questing Druids, Sunspine Lynx, Sentinel of the Nameless City, and Urabrask’s Forge can all come in for slower games. Authority of the Consuls is, notably, a smaller part of the metagame now, meaning Urabrask’s Forge can come in against some slower matchups like Dimir Midrange and Golgari Midrange.
Sentinel of the Nameless City, in particular, is an interesting card that could see larger amounts of play in aggressive green decks depending on how the metagame adjusts. This is the epitome of a scaling threat that provides sustain through the Map tokens it generates. Sentinel doubles as a strong blocker in mirror-esque matchups.
Pawpath Formation is a notable card in the sideboard that aggressive decks usually wouldn’t employ. That said, because Vivi Combo is rather strong at the moment, having a tool to remove Agatha’s Soul Cauldron is a must.
Finally, the bizarre inclusion of Pyroclasm in the sideboard suggests that this Mouse aggro deck can side into a more midrangey strategy against faster opponents. Convoke strategies, for example, are very viable now that the Mouse package took a hit, and Pyroclasm cleans up those boards with ease.
Meta Adjustments Might be Painful
At the time of writing, aggressive decks are not a huge part of the metagame. As a result, many MTG decks aren’t preparing for aggressive decks like they were before the bannings. That said, if it becomes clear that the Mouse package is still as threatening as ever, that may change.
Since the Mouse package is overall much weaker than it used to be, it will be a lot easier to stop. If many slower decks start employing Authority of the Consuls again, for example, Urabrask’s Forge, one of the better midrange cards for this aggro deck, will once again become unplayable. It’s not like Authority of the Consuls has entirely disappeared from the meta, either. Mono-White Tokens, one of the most successful archetypes post-ban, runs the card in the sideboard.
On the plus side, most of this deck is rotation-proof, which means that Red players trying to repurpose their mice have a decent way to do so. The manabase is in the most trouble once rotation hits, and will genuinely become a bit weaker, but the cards we haven’t seen out of Edge of Eternities may help this.
Right now, this Gruul deck has a bit of an edge thanks to being an unexpected deck in the new meta. It’s impossible to know where the Standard metagame will go, however, especially after rotation. For now, players who want to continually use Bloomburrow’s Mice have a place to do so.