Lands:
10 Tropical Island
10 Yavimaya Coast
4 Island
4 ForestCreatures:
4 Cephalid Vandal
3 Spike Feeder
Other Spells:
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Memory Lapse
4 Oath of Druids
4 Donate
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Gaea's Blessing
2 Pedantic Learning
1 Capsize
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  Shred
Head.
Description of deck by its author (quoted):
I actually find Cephalid Vandal one of the most intriguing cards in
Torment, cephalid or not. The thing just eats through a library and
feels like one of those borderline out-of-control cards that can
severely backfire if not used properly. In Odyssey Block or Type 2, my
best guess as to how the Vandal might work is:
- a deck that REALLY wants to achieve threshold,
- a graveyard-recursion deck, or
- in combination with Pedantic Learning.
Those are all interesting ideas, and I encourage you to explore them. My
first thought when looking at Cephalid Vandal, though, was to Donate it.
When Oath of Druids first appeared, I made a deck using it,
Counterspells and huge, ridiculous fatties. Tim Wu, a friend and
play-partner at the time, thought the deck was great fun and took it to
Nationals, where he won some side events. Very quickly, sophisticated
Oath decks emerged -- those that used creatures like Spike Feeder -- and
my big fattie deck couldn’t compete. I still love the card, though, and
I drool over its fun interaction with Gaea's Blessing.
Cephalid Vandal not only works great with Gaea’s Blessing too, but it
seems a perfect fit with the Oath as long as I’m using Donate. In fact,
the Extended deck I made uses a lot of tricks from those more
sophisticated Oath decks (including... grumble... Spike Feeder). But the
deck doesn’t worry about winning with damage at all. Instead, it happily
mills itself -- constantly recycling its own graveyard -- until the
Vandal has enough shred counters to Donate it.
The result is one of those decks whose losses are well worth the few
times it succeeds...
Cephalids. Interesting little critters. Maybe Aaron is on to something
by liking cephalids after all. Each has its own funky, mind-altering
mechanics that just beg to be used creatively. And, overall, they seem
to be relatively cost-efficient for all of the strangeness they offer.
Yes, maybe I misjudged cephalids and their blue, big-headed,
beady-eyed... tentacled... squirmy...
Nah. They’re still gross.
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