Allies.  Hardened Allies in fact.

 In my last post I didn’t get to go in detail on my thought process behind the build and how I play it.  To give you guys a concept, I play it the way one would play boggles and fish.  I tend to prefer having spells in my hand to protect my people, but it is not a must, depending on the deck you’re up against.  You do have to mulligan kinda like boggles, where you have the right cards.  You don’t want too many non creatures, and you don’t just want one creature either.  I still win with a 4 card hand; Your hand usually has to have 2 or more creatures.  You can keep a one land hand when you have an aether vial.  If I have an aether vial and a hardened scales in hand, I play the vial then the scales, unless I have to have a blocker.  If I have something to protect my creatures with, then I make sure to leave the mana open for that on my first creature drop.  Whether to continue to leave mana up for that depends on you.  You may need to out pace your opponent or you may need to just protect your creatures if they have a lot of removal.

Concerning the Meta:

You know, originally Jonathan and I didn’t build this deck with much of the meta in mind.  We just thought it would be cool to make a combo with hardened scales!  It turns out, this deck does have some nice interactions with the meta.  First off, you don’t have to worry about your creatures getting countered because of aether vial and cavern of souls.  Second off, for some reason having a response in hand for the removal tends to put you in a better spot.  If they can't target your creature, then abrupt decays and most meta removal fizzles.  Third off, a lot of the removal in the meta consists of burn, so once your allies toughness gets above 3, and esp above 6, you're sitting pretty.  Lastly, the life gain hates on certain decks.  If you have the right hand, you can out gain scapeshift.  Also, the life gain works well on burn.

The downsides is that if you don’t have a way to protect your creatures, and you're playing against a removal heavy deck, you tend to be sunk.  I’ve learned to either mulligan to a hand with protection, or wait till you can aether vial and cast a bunch of allies at once, which is especially nice with the help of hardened scales.  Secondly, you tend to lose a lot of life due to fetches and shocks.  I just made some changes to the deck and added a couple of fast lands.  I’m not sure it matters as much to have fetch lands to thin your deck as it would to losing life.  

Land (20)

• 4x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 2x Horizon Canopy
• 1x Plains
• 3x Razorverge Thicket
• 1x Seachrome Coast
• 2x Temple Garden
• 4x Windswept Heath

Creature (27)

• 4x Hada Freeblade
• 3x Jwari Shapeshifter
• 2x Kabira Evangel
• 4x Kazandu Blademaster
• 1x Kazuul Warlord
• 3x Ondu Cleric
• 4x Oran-Rief Survivalist
• 3x Talus Paladin
• 3x Umara Raptor

Artifact (4)

• 4x AEther Vial

Sideboard (15)

• 1x Emerge Unscathed
• 4x Leyline of Sanctity
• 1x Ondu Cleric
• 4x Oxidize
• 4x Path to Exile
• 1x Vines of Vastwood

Instant (5)

• 1x Emerge Unscathed
• 4x Vines of Vastwood

Enchantment (4)

• 4x Hardened Scales

Also, I’ve only brought the leylines in for discard.  This may be the wrong play since it is also good for burn.  My thought is that I don’t want to disrupt the synergy too much, esp since burn will target creatures once they realize it needs removing.  I will bring path in only when I have to get rid of creatures that combo.  For twin, vines works fine.  Also, the artifact removal is for Torpor orb, and affinity.

These are just my thoughts concerning the deck so far.  I think after I’ve played it for a month I should be able to say for certain on some of these things.