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By: CottonRhetoric, Cotton Rhetoric
Apr 23 2012 8:59am
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I usually write about this kind of avatar... but today I'm writing about this kind of avatar:

Avatar of Hope   Avatar of Will   Avatar of Woe

Avatar of Fury  Avatar of Might

Powerful creatures whose only cost is a strange board state!  Exciting, fun!  Speaking of fun, if you didn't read the article summary, the ideas I'm about to go over are for the casual room only.  Nothing in here will be of any use to tournaments of any format at any time in history.

First up:

Deck 1 Avatar of Fury

avatar of fury

We have two options with this guy.  1, play a patient defensive deck and wait for our opponent to hopefully drop 7 lands.  2, and much more exciting, play a reverse-ramp deck and accelerate our opponent into having lots of lands.  How do we do that?  With cards like this:

Veteran Explorer  Hired Giant  New Frontiers

And, more indirectly, cards like Winter Orb, which strongly encourage our opponents to drop as many lands as they're able.

The difficulty of Veteran Explorer is that most opponents will suspect you're up to something and never kill him or block him.  In a lot of ways, he plays out like a cheaper Invisible Stalker.  (Maybe he would be good in a bloodthirst deck to set up a turn two Scab-Clan Mauler?)  But I'm getting off track — my point is you sometimes have to kill him yourself.  Not every game gives you an opportunity to chump block.  You could craft a deck with sac outlets, but I went with Pyroclasm, which is also a great metagame choice for most of the casual room.

For acceleration, the dark-ritual-esque Tinder Wall seems optimal.  We sometimes want to speed into a turn-two Hired Giant, or raise an X-spell by 2, but our curve low enough that we don't need the steady flow of mana a Llanowar Elves would supply.

Here's my list.  It's casual and customizable!

Land (23):
12 Forest
11 Mountain

Creatures (18):
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Tinder Wall
4 Hired Giant
4 Avatar of Fury
2 Protean Hydra

Noncreatures (19):
2 O-Naginata
2 Avoid Fate
2 Lightning Greaves
2 Winter Orb
4 Pyroclasm
2 Toil to Renown
2 Acidic Soil
3 New Frontiers
Winter Orb O-Naginata

Deck 2 Avatar of Will

Avatar of Will

The ability of the red avatar needed green's help to trigger... the ability of the blue avatar needs black's help to trigger!  Very strange design indeed.

It's not so hard to empty an opponent's hand these days, so just pack your deck with discard spells and you're good to go.  But because I like to really capitalize on a theme, I decided to also use cards that work with my own hand emptied.  When else would I get to use cards like these?

Howltooth Hollow  Imaginary Pet  Veiled Crocodile

So instead of Ravenous Rats, use Rotting Rats.  And use other symmetrical discard effects, like Necrogen Mists.

    Bottled Cloister

A card that combos well with all of the above to a surprising degree is Bottled Cloister.  Consider:

  • If your hand isn't normally empty, this empties it for long enough to turn on a Veiled Crocodile or activate your Howltooth Hollow.
  • If you stack its trigger underneath the Imaginary Pet's trigger, you can keep him in play indefinitely... no matter how many cards are in your hand!
  • If you stack its trigger underneath the Necrogen Mists' trigger, you'll never have to discard a card to it!  (Unless you want to... which sometimes you do.)
  • It does, don't forget, let you draw an extra card every turn.  This is a significant advantage when everyone is being forced to discard their entire hands.

Between the above cards, some utility, and some acceleration, we have our entire deck.  Here's my build:

Land (24):
4 Howltooth Hollow
9 Swamp
11 Island

Creatures (17):
4 Rotting Rats
3 Imaginary Pet
2 Augur of Skulls
4 Guul Draz Specter
4 Avatar of Will

Noncreatures (19):
2 Go for the Throat
2 Negate
4 Necrogen Mists
4 Veiled Crocodile
4 Bottled Cloister
Necrogen Mists Guul Draz Specter

Last up,

Deck 3 Avatar of Woe

Avatar of Woe
Not to be confused with the Avatar of Avatar of Woe.

Finally, an avatar whose ability is synergistic with its own color!  Black is the king of the graveyard!

    Carrionette

If we're going to be filling our graveyard to activate the Avatar of Woe, we might as well pick cards that do things while they're in the graveyard.  And black has plenty of those: Carrionette, Akuta, Born of Ash, Necrosavant, Extractor Demon, Corpse Connoisseur, Vengeful Pharaoh... countless others.

Of course we don't want to be stuck with a Necrosavant in our hand, so we'll need some discard outlets (another thing black has plenty of!).  We'll pick ones that are themselves creatures, for the sake of the Avatar of Woe.  So instead of Necrogen Mists, we'll use the (admittedly weaker) Cunning Lethemancer.  Hey, if he was really that "cunning" he'd figure out a way to trigger during our opponent's turn like the Mists do.  Still, a body is a body so let's run him.

Then we need cards that put things directly into our graveyard.  Mesmeric Orb is exceptional at this.  Millikin is worth using as well.  And Anvil of Bogardan fits somewhere between this paragraph and the previous one, but it's good enough at what it does that we don't even mind its noncreature status.

Next are cards that put themselves into the graveyard, like Shriekmaw and Bottle Gnomes.

Last... we need a creature other than Avatar of Woe that benefits from a full graveyard.  I picked Mortivore (but, again, black has tons to choose from).  Or you could splash green for the Boneyard Wurm / Splinterfright suite.  (Another splash possibility: red, for Faithless Looting.  Possibly instead of the Anvil of Bogardans.)

Here's my version!  Lots of room for tinkering in this one.

Land (22):
22 Swamp

Creatures (30):
4 Millikin
4 Carrionette
4 Rotting Rats
3 Cunning Lethemancer
4 Mortivore
4 Shriekmaw
3 Vengeful Pharaoh
Avatar of Woe

Noncreatures (8):
4 Mesmeric Orb
4 Anvil of Bogardan
Mesmeric Orb Vengeful Pharaoh

As a bonus, here's what you can do with the other two Prophecy avatars:

Avatar of Hope: Dust off that Maralen avatar / Death's Shadow deck we built back in March 2010!  What a fun deck.

Avatar of Might: Uh... Forbidden OrchardVarchild's War-RidersHunted Troll?  No matter what it sounds like a losing proposition.  I would recommend never playing with Avatar of Might.

7 Comments

I think Avatar of Might might by KaraZorEl at Mon, 04/23/2012 - 09:35
KaraZorEl's picture

I think Avatar of Might might work if you have cards like Ensnaring Bridge and cards like Teferi's Moat- keep your opponents from attacking, that kind of thing.

Mm! I like the Teferi's Moat by CottonRhetoric at Mon, 04/23/2012 - 10:43
CottonRhetoric's picture

Mm! I like the Teferi's Moat idea. Of course, your own Avatar wouldn't be able to attack with a Bridge out :)

Okay, as long as we're being by KaraZorEl at Mon, 04/23/2012 - 23:12
KaraZorEl's picture

Okay, as long as we're being silly....cast Hatred, pay 15 life and cast Fling.

If you want to get really by LostAlone at Tue, 04/24/2012 - 06:11
LostAlone's picture

If you want to get really silly then how does any avatar + birthing bod work for you ?

Avatar (cast for 2) -> Artisan of Kozilek (returning the avatar) or Iona, Shield of Emirria (who's just evil) -> Progenitus -> Ulamog or Darksteel Colossus -> Blightsteel Colossus.

I was hoping you could get all the way up to Emrakul but there's nothing at 13 or 14 :(.

Still... If you can somehow get that stuff set-up, then you are in for good times.

Avatar of Will by grapplingfarang at Tue, 04/24/2012 - 06:51
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5

Looks like a fun time. I haven't looked at Avatar of Will in a long time, Avatar of Will w/ discard almost seems constructed playable. The support cards would probably have to get a lot more expensive, but the basic theme w/ Avatar sounds like something that could win a few packs in legacy with.

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