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Ordinarily, my vanguard deck building process is to look at an avatar, think of what would go well with its ability, and go from there.  Today's decks work backwards though.  With each of these, I started with a regular card that I liked so much it made me scour the list of avatars to decide what would go well with it.

In other words, instead of going avatar first to cards second, today I'm going card first to avatar second.

If you're new to my column, these decks are intended for CASUAL, NONCOMPETITIVE use.  I also highly encourage you to modify the decklists according to your own likes.

Deck 1 Lord of Tresserhorn



If you ever looked at my personal information page, you will have seen my belief that "winning with Lord of Tresserhorn takes sophistication."  So can I meet my own standard?

Of the Lord's three CIP abilities, the hardest one to deal with is obviously the "sacrifice two creatures" line.  I'll assume you don't mind losing two life, and although we don't want to give our opponent two cards, this isn't a "build around me" ability so much as an unfortunate occurence.  I guess you could put the Lord in your Seismic Assault / Ebony Owl Netsuke deck, but honestly, using him to deal damage in that way seems against the spirit of his 10/4 body.  (I have thought about pairing him with Chains of Mephistopheles, but again, the types of decks to capitalize on that card don't generally need a 10/4 in play.)

So what avatars go well with this guy?  Erhnam Djinn is an easy enough way to get token creatures. Teysa can help us recoup from the sacrifice (but won't help us in actually getting there).  Master of the Wild Hunt may seem good here but really all it does is change the CC of the Lord from 1UBR to 5GGUBR, which honestly isn't the best deal we can find.  I ended up going a different route, one that took me a while to realize how well it would work:

Think about it.  The elf token not only accelerates the Lord, but gives us half the fodder we'll need for his ability.  Having to find only one other creature to sacrifice won't be hard at all.  Really, that's the same deal the Erhnam avatar would give us, except with added acceleration.  And after the Lord comes out, we won't be needing any more 1/1 tokens, so the Erhnam avatar would really be superfluous.

It's easy to view the Elvish Champion avatar as an inferior version of the Orcish Squatters avatar, but even if you ignore the creature token aspect of it, the mana part alone has at least two upsides:

1. The extra mana is ready on our first turn whether we play OR draw.
2. The mana is colored.

So let's put use all of these ideas to piece the deck together.

First, 4x Lord of Tresserhorn may not be enough of a win condition by himself, so let's just make "huge but cheap creatures with sacrifice costs" our theme and add 2 Phyrexian Soulgorger as well.  (I used to run 4 of both, but that many Soulgorgers proved to be unsustainable.  Maybe that route would be better suited for the Erhnam or Teysa avatars....)  Since 6 slots still isn't a great win condition, I'm also adding 4x Time of Need.

If the "sacrifice costs" is our theme, let's also include cards like Mudbutton Torchrunner, Rukh Egg, and Grave Pact.  A late addition to this deck for me was a singleton Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker (aside from the sacrifice theme, he's also a good Time of Need target when a Lord of Tresserhorn is already in hand).  The same goes for Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper.

Quick aside: The art for Sek'Kuar's graveborn tokens MAY be the ugliest token art I have ever seen.  Look, if you dare.

Since our avatar gives us green mana, we can run BURG instead of just BUR.  And since it gives us mana on the first turn, we should switch out our 1-drops for 2-drops.  In other words, if you would normally use Elves of Deep Shadow, this avatar lets you freely swap it out for Llanowar Dead as your first-turn accel.  (This particular deck runs Gemhide Sliver instead, since its main win condition is 3 colors, but you get the idea.)

Play tip: If you cast a first turn Gemhide Sliver, you'll have enough mana AND creatures to cast a second turn Lord of Tresserhorn.  This is what every Lord of Tresserhorn player has dreamed of.

I'm also limiting the green cards to things that we want to cast in the early game, since you can't rely on your avatar's elf token still being in play when you're ready to cast your Savage Twister (for instance).  And the mana base is stretched enough by making it three colors; giving full support to green might have been overwhelming.

One personal design quirk of mine is that I (almost always) like to run two artifact destruction spells in each deck I make.  For this deck, I chose Fury Charm, which aside from destroying artifacts, can also help that huge powered, no-evasion creature of yours trample over the opponent's saproling token unexpectedly.

Grab the Reins has a few uses in this deck.  The obvious one is to fling your Lord of Tresserhorn (or Phyrexian Soulgorger) at your opponent when they're at a low enough life.  But the reason it's a Grab the Reins and not a Fling is because you can also use it to steal an opponent's creature when your Soulgorger's cumulative upkeep is on the stack and then sacrifice it to the trigger.

And then there's the usual gamut of tricks that aren't specific to this deck.  When an opponent attacks you with two creatures, steal one and use it to block the other.  When the opponent left one chump blocker untapped, steal it and attack to the now-empty board.  Et cetera.

Bottom line, the added versatility makes it worth the extra mana, especially since by the time we'll want to use it we'll have a lot of mana built up and not much else to do with it besides occasionally regenerate our 10/4.

With all of its mana elves and tutoring, this deck doesn't need to mulligan very often.  Remember, Time of Need and Night's Whisper can each be cast on the first turn with this avatar.

Casual, Noncompetitive, Customizable Decklist:

Avatar: Elvish Champion Land (21): 4 Gemstone Mine 2 Crumbling Necropolis 7 Swamp 2 Island 5 Mountain 1 Forest Creatures (19): 4 Gemhide Sliver 2 Quirion Elves 1 Urborg Elf 3 Mudbutton Torchrunner 2 Phyrexian Soulgorger 1 Rukh Egg 4 Lord of Tresserhorn 1 Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper 1 Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

Noncreatures (20): 4 Paralyze 2 Lightning Bolt 4 Time of Need 4 Night's Whisper 2 Fury Charm 2 Grab the Reins 2 Grave Pact

When deciding which version to buy, remember that the Stronghold version has the best art, a black border, AND is also somehow the chepest.

My original version of the Lord of Tresserhorn / Elvish Champion deck was completely different.  It ran 4 Desolation and 4 Army Ants.  With the avatar's acceleration, either could be online by Turn 2, locking the opponent out from ever having more than two lands in play at once.  And it did this while beating down with a 10/4 regenerator.  I will not be sharing that decklist as it was inordinately cruel and unfun and accomplished little beyond a string of bitter concessions.  This is not what casual gaming is about!  Let's move to the next deck.

Deck 2 Enduring Renewal

Ice Age was the newest set when I first started playing Magic all those years ago, so any card from Ice Age automatically has a warm spot in my heart.  Everything from Krovikan Vampire to Shyft.  Even Snowfall!  But unlike those cards, Enduring Renewal actually has the potential to accomplish something useful.  (Please, no comments about your Krovikan Vampire combos.  You know what I mean.)

What avatars go well with it?  Any 0 CMC creature with this and the Loxodon avatar creates an infinite loop.  But infinite loops are even more annoying in Magic Online than in real life ("the decks of a thousand clicks," as I call them), so I won't be using any of those ever.  Still, you could at least use that avatar to turn your regular creatures into makeshift Blinking Spirits (hey, another Ice Age card) or to reuse their CIP effects.  This also might go well with the Kresh avatar so you can redevour again and again.

We're taking a different route though.  Instead of picking an avatar that helps us with the creatures hitting the graveyard part of Enduring Renewal, we're picking an avatar that helps us around the "if you would draw a card" replacement effect.  Specifically:

Enduring Renewal tries to stop us from drawing creatures, but with a Maralen out, we're not drawing them anyway.  We're "putting them into our hand," which is perfectly allowable.  The advantage here is that we don't have to wait for our combo pieces to be in our hand before we cast the Enduring Renewal.  We can just cast it whenever and continue to draw into our combo pieces.  And for a combo-oriented deck, Maralen is also the perfect avatar to help us find what we need.

Again, I severely dislike infinite combos, so I will be using cards that are synergistic with Enduring Renewal, not insta-wins with it.  Kami of False Hope and Kami of Ancient Law are more useful when they're reusable.  Revered Unicorn, Jötun Owl Keeper, and Calciderm establish a little more permanence.  Sustaining Spirit is particularly useful, since it basically changes from having a cumulative upkeep of 1W to a noncumulative upkeep of 1W (think about it).

To protect our important Enduring Renewal, I'm using a few Rebuff the Wickeds and one Greater Auramancy (one is all you need, since our avatar lets us tutor for it and its effect is noncumulative).  The Auramancy can also keep safe our Faith's Fetters, Oblivion Rings, and Endless Horizons.

I will go as far as to say that Endless Horizons should be an autoinclude in any white Maralen deck ever made.  It not only lets you draw two cards a turn, and it not only exempts you from ever needing to pick a land during your draw step when you would rather pick something else, but best of all, without lands in your deck, you'll see a wider variety of options during each draw step.  Extremely useful.

Some people raise the "what if it gets disenchanted" complaint, but really, by the time they disenchant it we probably have enough mana anyway.  And what's more, just removing those lands from our deck is benefit enough, since like I said it drastically improves our draw step.  Whether they disenchant the Horizons or not, they can't take that part of it away from us.

Like the last Maralen deck I showed you, this also has hints of a toolbox, between situational cards and one-ofs.  And also like the last Maralen deck, the right number of life to pay at the beginning changes but is usually 5 or 6.  Pay more if your opponent's avatar hints at a control deck and less if it hints at an aggro deck.

I think I've covered all of the main points.  This deck can be pretty fun, and obviously there's a huge freedom in ways to tinker with it.  The only essential part of the deck besides the avatar itself is the Enduring Renewal.  I recommend keeping the Sustaining Spirit and Endless Horizons, but they're not technically mandatory.  Calciderm and Serra's Blessing is a fun wincon, but it's hardly the only or even best wincon.  The deck doesn't even have to stay monowhite.  Every color has a huge number of creatures that combo well with Enduring Renewal.  Experiment around!

Casual, Noncompetitive, Customizable Decklist:

Avatar: Maralen Land (22): 22 Plains Creatures (20): 2 Kami of False Hope 4 Wall of Hope 2 Kami of Ancient Law 2 Revered Unicorn 2 Sustaining Spirit 4 Jötun Owl Keeper 4 Calciderm

Noncreatures (18): 3 Rebuff the Wicked 2 Divine Offering 1 Greater Auramancy 1 Serra's Blessing 3 Oblivion Ring 2 Endless Horizons 4 Enduring Renewal 2 Faith's Fetters

Deck 3 Toshiro Umezawa

       Sorry, sorceries: this isn't for you.

Oh man.  I've been obsessed with this card since Wizards.com first previewed it.  It's a tough nut to crack, but ultimately anyone who tries to build around it will probably end up somewhere similar because it really requires all three of these elements to work properly:

1. Lots of instants, probably cheap to cast
2. Lots of creature removal, also cheap to cast
3. Ways to pile up the graveyard

If we're trying to be efficient, and why wouldn't we be, we'll pick cards that fit multiple categories at once.  That means we're probably either running a black-red deck with Terrors and Lightning Bolts, a black-blue deck with Terrors and Mental Notes, or a black-blue-red deck with all of the above.  Green and white technically have instants too, but few that make sense next to Toshiro.  "Okay I'll kill your creature, and recast, um, Tithe."

So what avatars are helpful here?  None help us with the instants angle.  A couple help us kill our opponent's creatures, but are either unreliable (like Phage), mana intensive (like Bosh), or both (like Jaya).  Let's go with an avatar that just helps us with the ol' graveyard angle:

Note: This avatar's stats have since been
changed to +0 hand and +5 life.

So this avatar not only helps fuel our Toshiro Umezawa but also find him in the first place, both of which are essential to running our deck successfully.

This particular build has 24 instants, which fall into a few categories:

• Card draw.  With a Mental Note, Peek, or Cremate in your graveyard, any creature kill instant now has a cantrip kicker for 1.  Mental Note is doubly good in this deck for obvious reasons.  Inspiration is expensive but more helpful than you might expect in the late game.
• Creature removal.  Of course.  Note that, with enough mana, you can chain a few of these together, which each one triggering the next.  (You can even chain one kill spell into itself!  Really.)  Anyway we are focusing mostly on cheap creature removal (Darkblast, Last Gasp, Terror), with the most expensive costing three (Rend Flesh).
• Acceleration.  I also could have called this category "cards that are named Dark Ritual."  Anyway it is nice to tap your only three lands for a Last Gasp and a recurred Dark Ritual which you then use to cast a 3-mana spell.  It's reminiscent of those "free" spells from Urza's block.
• Countering.  I only have two counterspells, in the form of Negate, but it is a fun trick to respond to a spell on the stack with a Terror and then a recurred Negate.  It's also a really transparent trick, since your Negate is quite visible in the graveyard, but it's fun nonetheless.  (I'm picking Negate over Remove Soul for instance since we want to kill the creatures AFTER they're in play, not before.  And with all the removal we have, noncreatures are the only things we need to worry about.)
• Tutoring.  2x Lim-Dûl's Vault is a great way not only to find our Toshiro on turn two and then cast him on turn three, but also to set ourselves up for exactly the right type of instants to help with the current board position.  Don't be afraid to spend a few life on this spell: you don't need to settle for an OK selection when a good one is a couple of piles down.  To put it another way: don't think of your Lim-Dul's Vault like a Sage Owl.  Think of it like a Vampiric Tutor.  Uh, for five.

Those are the spells.  For our creatures, we're sticking to ones that are directly synergistic with our gameplan.  In other words:

Ones that help us kill our opponent's creatures, like Ogre Marauder.  Yes, this card is über-janky, but it catches more than a few unprepared opponents off-guard.  Say they have two Grizzly Bears in play and you attack with this 3/1.  In order to kill it, they have to sacrifice one Bear and then block with the other.  And what they often don't realize that first time around is that their sacrifice just triggered your Toshiro, meaning you can recur that Last Gasp and kill the second bear before blockers are even declared.  That's not even a 2 for 1 on your opponent, that's a 2 for 0.  With all the creature removal you have in this deck, it's very rare that your opponent will be able to successfully block this guy, meaning he's usually just three unblockable damage each turn.  And occasionally some free spells on top of that. Cards that help fill our graveyard, like Magus of the Jar.  Not much to about it besides "I really like this guy in here." Cards that are Toshiro Umezawa.  For instance, Toshiro Umezawa is Toshiro Umezawa.  I'll therefore play 4 of him.

My original build ran the Johnny-tastic Taniwha, thinking I could work around his land-phasing drawback with all of my instants.  And I could, but there was one problem with it.

When I did the math about how much damage this phasing creature was actually dealing, I concluded that, at five mana, he was a worse deal than even Air Elemental.  And Air Elemental is a worse deal than Serra Sphinx.  And although Serra Sphinx might be an effective win condition, it doesn't have any synergy with our gameplan so I skipped it.  (I'm like that.)  Anyway, aside from the coolness inherent in "I'm attacking you with Taniwha," it really didn't serve a purpose.  (Well, if it was the only creature I had in play, the card image would grow gigantic when my lands all phased out, and that looked awesome, but I'm not sure if that counts as a purpose.)

Moving along, if you can stretch your black-intensive manabase to handle a third color, Wee Dragonauts could be really synergistic in this deck.  Ditto Gelectrode.

Three last cards in the deck I want to mention:

One is Endless Whispers, which not only steals your opponent's creatures, but also gives you more opportunities to cast your creature removal spells if he steals them back, therefore getting you more graveyard triggers.  It also gives you a chance to steal back your Toshiro if he dies, instead of just losing him forever and relying on your avatar to find another one.

One is Lightning Greaves, a way to protect our fragile and important Toshiro.  It also helps our 1-toughness Ogre shrug off direct damage.

The other is a singleton Forbidden Crypt.  As you may have noticed about me, I am a sucker for the cards that are fun but not necessarily good.

Casual, Noncompetitive, Customizable Decklist:

Avatar: Prodigal Sorcerer Land (23): 12 Swamp 11 Island Creatures (10): 4 Toshiro Umezawa 4 Ogre Marauder 2 Magus of the Jar

Noncreatures (27): 1 Cremate 2 Dark Ritual 2 Darkblast 4 Mental Note 2 Peek 1 Lightning Greaves 4 Last Gasp 2 Lim-Dûl's Vault 2 Negate 2 Terror 2 Rend Flesh 2 Inspiration 2 Endless Whispers 1 Forbidden Crypt

Like most Prodigal Sorcerer decks, this one is even fairly workable (but not QUITE as strong) in nonvanguard formats.

See you next time, and have fun with vanguard!