Each of today's decks are centered on cards that require justification. The first deck uses Dingus Staff. Yes, Dingus Staff.
Deck 1 Ashling the Pilgrim
Ashling is a powerful avatar and a great metagame choice (vanguard is dominated pretty heavily by creature decks), and so I'm always looking for new ways to use it. This deck started with the idea of using it to get Dingus Staff triggers.
Any time a creature goes to a graveyard, its controller takes 2 damage. That includes token creatures, so let's find a way to give our opponent some, and it includes your own creatures, so let's use guys with high toughness. A creature that fills both of these roles brilliantly is Varchild's War-Riders. (As I mention in my profile, this happens to be my favorite card of all time.)
We'll need more ways than that to give our opponent tokens, so I also went with tournament staple Forbidden Orchard (which doesn't feel quite as broken when it's supplementing Dingus Staff instead of Oath of Druids). Its multicolor ability has the added bonus of helping us to splash a color, which I'll get to later.
And my favorite token trick in the deck: Mogg Infestation! It not only puts a lot of tokens on our opponent's side for us to kill, and not only removes their otherwise hard-to-deal-with threats, but can even deal damage itself if a Dingus Staff is out first! Not to mention multiple copies combo with each other. If your opponent has but two Grizzly Bears in play, and you cast a Dingus Staff, a Mogg Infestation, and a second Mogg Infestation, and then activate your avatar for one, you will have just dealt the opponent 33 damage. While clearing their board.
Another cool card in the deck is Bloodchief Ascension. It's very easy to power up, with our avatar dealing damage on a regular basis. And it doesn't exactly fit the token theme (it requires a card to go to the graveyard, not a creature), but it's still easy enough for this to happen. And the effect is powerful enough for it to be worthwhile.
I mentioned there was a light splash, and it's mostly for the sake of destruction. Ancient Grudge gets much stronger with green mana around, and Hull Breach fills in some gaps with what a red-black deck can deal with. Green-producing Signets also help with the splash, as well as helping us to accelerate. Although the deck appears at a glance to have a very low curve, the avatar activations are a huge drain on our resources.
The decklist, which is casual and customizable:
The next deck up is centered on Bulwark. Yes, Bulwark.
Deck 2 Arcanis the Omnipotent
For a long time I'd hated this avatar. All people used it for was repeating EtB triggers, and it got boring. (Not to mention frustrating, as unkillable Blinking Spirits that also draw tons of cards are pretty formidable.) Wasn't there anything else to do with this avatar?
Literally years after its release (I looked it up — it came out in August 2007) I believe I've found a new use for it. And it's all thanks to Urza's Saga, and a card called Bulwark:
So instead of using Arcanis to just cast Mystic Snake 200 times, we're going to use it to set up some defense, build up our handsize, and then deal a ton of damage.
Goldenglow Moth is a great combination with Arcanis. When it blocks, you gain 4 life. Not when it receives damage, not when it goes to the graveyard, when it blocks. So block with it, gain 4 life, return it to your hand, and repeat the next turn. For the same cost investment as a Will-o'-the-Wisp, you're getting a much larger return. And also occasionally drawing cards.
I'll say the same thing about Loyal Sentry. It triggers when it blocks. We're running a playset of these. And we can throw in a couple of Æther Membranes too.
Since we're running so many guys that like to block, we can run the janktastic High Ground as well. Woo, High Ground!
As for our aggro creatures, the direction of this deck makes us want a very specific type of guy.
- Guys with some strong evasion, since the whole game-plan is to gum up the board. We need a way to get through our opponent's creatures who are choosing not to attack into our unkillable Loyal Sentry.
- Guys with low CCs, so they're easy to return with our avatar. Really it's unsafe to cast someone without leaving open enough mana to also return them in that same turn. Gotta be low CC.
- Guys without protection, as they don't need it, so spending mana for that kind of upgrade would be a waste. Remember, our avatar protects our guys already. Someone with shroud or protection from a color is redundant.
- Guys who aren't necessarily built to block. We don't need any more blockers. Remember Goldenglow Moth and High Ground? Vigilance needs not apply.
As it turns out, there's a type of creature who fits all these criteria at once. I present...
...white's shadow creatures!
They're cheap... they're evasive... they're fragile... and they probably won't be blocking! A perfect fit for this avatar and this deck.
They're a great way to rack up some damage while waiting for your Bulwarks to get online. (And with all of the card draw this avatar allows, your Bulwarks will almost always be getting online.) I chose 4 Soltari Trooper and 2 Soltari Visionary, but customize as you like.
The rest of the cards in the deck are self-explanatory, so I'll just get to the list. I enjoy this deck a lot and recommend it.
The last deck for the day uses The Unspeakable. Yes, The Unspeakable.
Deck 3 Hermit Druid
Back before I got into vanguard, when I was very very new to Magic Online, one of my first decks was a UR arcane deck. I always liked it, and it won its share of games, but it always had a few problems. It was too slow, I couldn't fit in enough arcane cards for my Ire of Kaminaris to do as much as they should, and the deck wasn't flexible enough. The Hermit Druid avatar fixes all of these problems.
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Don't do it.
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First, a quick aside about The Unspeakable. There seems to be this attitude, and I've encountered this a lot, that if you're going to use The Unspeakable, you should also be using playsets of Sift Through Sands, Peer Through Depths, and Reach Through Mists to get him into play. This is dead wrong. I have tried that strategy multiple times and it's dead wrong. Let's examine why.
- It doesn't save much mana. It's 2UUUU instead of 6UUU, which is cheaper, true, but not by enough to justify the other hoops to jump through.
- You have to have all three cards in your hand at the same time. This is difficult to arrange.
- The cards are dead in your hand until you have all three at once. You might want to cast that Peer Through Depths early on, but you can't. You have to just let it sit there doing nothing until turn six. If everything goes right!
- You have to cast them in the right order! You can't use Sift Through Sands to get to missing combo pieces. You can't cast it until after your other combo pieces are already cast. It's terrible.
- You're never sure whether Peer Through Depths can help find the missing piece or not. Let's say you have six mana, a Peer Through Depths, and a Reach Through Mists in your hand. Should you "go for it"? There's a decent chance you'll find a Sift Through Sands in the top six cards of your library, in which case you'll be glad you went for it. But there's also a very decent chance you won't find anything, in which case you just lost two thirds of your combo as well as your entire hope of ever assembling the pieces again for the rest of the game.
If I've been unclear on this point, the combo is bad and should never be used by anybody ever. Peer Through Mists is good by itself to find our spells. And Reach Through Mists is a cheap way to get some splices going. But we are absolutely not going to run a single copy of Sift Through Sands. We are going to hardcast our The Unspeakable, a vastly superior strategy, even in formats where you don't have an avatar helping you accelerate.
So!
As you may have guessed, if we're running The Unspeakable, we're running lots of arcane cards. And if we're running lots of arcane cards, we'll want lots of arcane cards with splice. And if we're doing that, we'll want a lot of cheap arcane cards with splice.
With all of that in mind, a large portion of the deck builds itself, but there are a few things I can point out. First, point those Dampen Thoughts at yourself. The idea is to get arcane cards in your graveyard to set yourself up for some huge Ire of Kaminaris. (And you really have no chance of winning by decking. We're winning by damage!)
What should you be recurring once your The Unspeakable is online? The obvious choices are your gigantic Ire of Kaminaris and Spiraling Embers, but don't forget about the smaller spells too. Casting an Eye of Nowhere once every turn can be quite strong. (Compare @ Capsize.)
The Meishin, the Mind Cages might seem like a nonbo with the The Unspeakables. And they are. They're not two parts of the same gameplan, they're the centerpieces of two different game-plans. Sometimes we'll want to win by attacking and recurring spells. And sometimes we'll want to just shut down the board and point direct damage at our opponent's head. This deck can win with either. Or with both, switching plans midgame. Versatility!
As mentioned up top, the avatar not only lets us ramp up our mana, but also greatly thin out the deck, both improving our draws and our Dampen Thought / Ire of Kaminari combo. It's a pretty fun deck, not to mention a nostalgic trip.
See you next time, and have fun with vanguard!
