Across my 41 previous vanguard articles, the below avatars have been featured once each. Today's uses of them differ drastically from the previous versions, utilizing not only different colors but different strategies. Let's get started —
Deck 1 Raksha Golden Cub
The earlier version was an equipment-heavy, believe it or not, Wakestone-Gargoyle-powered wall deck. Today's deck is a little different!
The premise here is not to focus on the equipment ability (or walls), but more on the +0/+1 bonus, which applies whether they're equipped or not. (I do still have some equipment in here, but it's of secondary importance to the toughness boost.) Specifically, I want to put their toughness from 4 to 5, a very important gulf when considering all of the "deal 4" sweepers out there. Something this deck will specialize in.
The reason I'm using this avatar next to 4-toughness creatures, instead of another avatar with 5-toughness creatures, is because of these guys:
What 5-toughness red creature costs only three mana? Or only four mana, with no drawback? Or is itself a deal-4 sweeper? (None that I know of, but please correct this in the comments section if I missed any.)
Regarding Crag Puca: he's normally a 2/5 and he can become a 5/2 on a moment's notice. This is good not only when he's unblocked, but also when he's equipped: the avatar will give him first strike, don't forget!
Rosheen Meanderer is in here primarily as a big 4/5 beater for 4 mana, but I couldn't have 4 of him without at least a couple of X spells. Rolling Thunder and Flowstone Slide are my favorites, but there are obviously many others to choose from.
Hammerfist Giant can finally, finally survive himself. For the first time in his life, doing what he was created to do doesn't cause him to die.
A funny trick in here is Rukh Egg. It gets a toughness boost up to 4, making it still susceptible to the deal-4 sweepers. But the token it makes will have high enough toughness to survive future deal-4s!
As for which deal-4s to use, there are a surprisingly high number of them. Slice and Dice, Lavaball Trap, Crater Hellion, and Breath of Darigaaz are all viable. But I went straight to arguably the most powerful one, Wildfire. With a single one of the above four creatures on the field, it's hard to lose after a Wildfire.
I have but 5 slots dedicated to equipment, as I don't want to bog my hand down with them. Also, this deck prefers to have a small number of big creatures rather than a large number of small creatures. Especially since its sweeps will clear the opponents' chump blockers. And besides, when you have a 7/5 first strike against an empty board, do you really need to put a second equipment on him? My personal preferences are Bonesplitter, Empyrial Plate, and Lightning Greaves. Any one of them can be brutal.
Here's the list. Like all of my decks, it's casual and customizable!
Deck 2 Rith, the Awakener
This avatar was actually featured in my first ever article for this site, in a mono-green deck. The idea was to use One with Nature to accelerate into and then combo with Nature's Will, getting large numbers of dragon tokens at once, who would then combo even further with Nature's Will.
This deck is a bit different! It's UW instead of G, and instead of accelerating into several dragons, it carefully controls the board while sneaking a single dragon at a time into play — more than enough to win given how the board state usually looks by then.
First things first: how do we get creatures unblocked? UW has many excellent options in this regard, but here are the five I settled on for my deck:
The first three even perform other duties along the way.
Of course there are any number of other options. Between shadow, horsemanship, fear/intimidate/seeker, and cards that are outright unblockable, you can pick pretty much whatever. Even flying is usually enough to get the job done. (Although beware: if your opponent realizes that your avatar is your main win condition, he will probably leave his own flier untapped to block yours.)
You also have near-limitless options for how to build the controlling parts of your deck. We're in blue-white here, the most classically associated colors for control decks. Consider:
- Spot removal (Pacifism, Path to Exile type cards)
- Counterspells (blue has a few of these... there are even white ones, and blue-white multicolored ones)
- Stall (Propaganda and Arcane Laboratory are both good, and incidentally both also exist in colorshifted white versions if your manabase requires it)
- Disenchants (again, there are a few to choose from)
- Wraths (although actually, I don't recommend wraths in this particular deck since we want to keep our cheap unblockable guys around)
You can see the below decklist for my choices of control cards, but really, the sky is the limit.
Switching topics, we'll need some accel. Azorius Signet is always good. And I stumbled upon a really great one for this deck: Sunseed Nurturer! Let's take a look:
So he lets us curve into 5, which is enough for a Rith activation. And he starts gaining us life for that Rith token, the same turn it enters play. How cool!
Two last tricks to mention before I get to the list. Coastal Piracy is a fun way to cache in on all the small unblocked creatures our avatar already wants us to have. And Suppression Field pairs well with the deck's zero activated costs. Not to mention is a nice supplement to our Ghostly Prison suite. They together slow our opponent down quite sufficiently for us to get some dragon tokens going. The list:
Last up:
Deck 3 Platinum Angel
My last and only previous Platinum Angel deck was mono black, featuring some heavy suicide cards and a mill strategy. Today's deck is mono-red and, as you may have guessed, attempts to win through damage rather than milling.
So why red? Because of this card:
I mentioned wanting to use it in my previous article, but never actually did. Think about why it's so good. It's your turn, and you have an artifact and a creature in play. You cast Final Fortune. Then, on your next turn, you cast an enchantment, turning on the avatar and preventing us from dying to Final Fortune's trigger. You just got a Time Walk for the price of... a Time Walk. (You know how Mike Flores is always saying that a card "effectively Time Walks" the opponent? This literally does Time Walk them.)
Pact of the Titan was in the last deck, and honestly the trick is too good with Platinum Angel to pass up. So out of every card in both decks, only 2 of them overlap. I can live with that. Anyway if you're missing how good this card is with the Angel, suppose it's the opponent's turn, and if you have an enchantment in play, plus any artifact land. They attack you for lethal damage. In response, you cast the instant (!) speed Pact of the Titan. Don't even block with it. Let the opponent bring you to negative life totals with their attack, because you now meet the qualifications for your avatar. And you still will during your upkeep when you choose not to pay 4R for the Pact's trigger. It's well worth the... 0 mana investment.
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That all out of the way, let's get to what new tricks mono-red allows us. First, it's full of symmetrical damagers. These are good because their symmetry is made a little moot by our avatar, turning them instead into really efficiently-costed one-way damagers. Spellshock, Pyrostatic Pillar, Spiteful Visions, Heartless Hidetsugu, Manabarbs... getting the idea? I do recommend going with non-instant or -sorcery ones, for the sake of our avatar (sorry Acidic Soil), but as illustrated there are plenty to choose from. Artifacts can also help out with "symmetrical" damage, with cards like Ankh of Mishra.
We'll need a lot more artifacts than that, if we want our avatar to turn on. Howling Mine helps us get to the cards we need for our avatar, a goal which will negate whatever help it might give our opponent. Black Vise is a wonderful complement to Howling Mine. Lightning Greaves not only slips in some extra damage but more importantly helps our creature survive. (Remember: our own survival depends on the survival of our creatures.) Orb of Dreams also helps us set up our avatar conditions, by slowing down the opponent a little. (And if we can't lose the game, we don't really care about our own stuff being tapped.) Cursed Totem is a nice pair with the creatures I ended up choosing (you'll see in a minute). And Mirror Universe... well just remember that we'll be spending large chunks of the game in negative life totals.
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Creatures. Creatures should fall into two basic categories in this deck. Ones that stall while we set up, and ones that get in some damage. As far as stalling goes, red has some surprisingly good walls for an allegedly aggro color. Wall of Razors, Æther Membrane, and Wall of Stone are all excellent in this regard. (I've never said this before, but "I wish Wall of Earth were online.") As for sneaking in damage, Varchild's War-Riders (my favorite card of all time) can easily do that. And the tokens it gives the opponent are completely irrelevant, both for blocking the War-Riders (he has rampage) or dealing us damage (we don't care). And speaking of tokens we don't care about, we don't care about the three knight tokens our Hunted Dragon gives the opponent. Because we're hitting them for 6 flying damage a turn, and our avatar lets us take damage infinitely.
This is a deck you should probably play in solo games a little bit before taking to an opponent, as it handles kind of weirdly. Sometimes your goal is to set up the avatar conditions as soon as possible (it's technically possible as early as Turn 2, but Turn 3 or 4 is the most common). And sometimes you don't need to set it up until much later in the game, so you'd rather spend time dealing damage while holding onto your Pact of the Titan just in case. Anyway, with 15 artifacts, 13 enchantments, and 12 creatures, (and 11 draw spells,) it's not too hard to get set up. Give this deck a try!
See you next time, and have fun with vanguard!
1 Comments
I remember that first Rith deck. I actually went out and built it. Keep up the articles.