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The third installment is here my friends! Did you miss me? No, well never mind then; let's get on with the decks!
And the award for beatdown king goes to: Mishra! This is double strike for free, and best of all: It stacks with double strike! Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to embark on the quest of a lifetime. To make ridicules amounts of damage in the name of fun! Pump and double strike are even more powerful, and even weenies can do some real damage at last!
Without the ability on the vanguard card, this deck can rack up the damage very quickly, thanks to the shared abilities. But with the vanguard card, the damage this deck can deal is kicked into overdrive. In total, all creatures can potentially have: Protection from creatures, double strike, haste & flying. So just ensure that you lay creatures fast and you’ll soon have the superior army. See, it pays to go through all that standard army training!
Variable pump for all your creatures; where was this guy when we built the Gerrard deck hey? Anyway, we need cards in hand to make this guy work. And now I think about it, there are a few creatures that take advantage of your hand size as well; either to improve their stats or to give them abilities.
The idea is really simple, put out some creatures, accumulate a large hand then swing with big tramplers. Simple really; as beatdown decks should be! You’ll notice a far amount of mana accelerant in this deck, mainly because your big creatures cost a fair amount; so to keep in the game you need to play out your mana sources soon. A friend pointed out to me that this deck could easily have up to five mana out on turn two, allowing you to swing out a Maro on turn three. And with hand size pump and a mass card pull system with the wizards you have, you’re going to hit hard. Primal rage is the icing on the cake, giving all your big creatures trample for the sake of two mana.
Combat will never, ever be a problem to us thanks to this ability. But how do we use this ability to our advantage? We need abilities that trigger when your creatures attack, but doesn’t rely on the creature actually finishing the attack. This leaves us with very few cards indeed, and only two of them are really of any use. This restricts us but still allows us to play an interesting deck.
Yes, another test of endurance deck; but with a foxy flavour! (I apologize for that joke). The two key cards that we take advantage of are Righteous Cause and Patron of the Kitsune, as by the unique wording on them; the creature need only attack, but doesn’t need to complete that attack for the benefit to happen. But you don’t think that’s all this deck has to offer you, oh no. With the ever present Eight-and-a-half tails and Kitsune Mystic combo, you gain an extreme amount of life each turn; and thanks to Rune-Tail you can keep your creatures safe from all damage that comes their way. Even if you can’t get the creatures out, you have ethereal hazes to halt the opponents’ onslaught and the chant works wonders in the late game.
Basically this turns all your creatures into spiders, blocking flying beasties without actually flying themselves. This ability is probably the weakest one you will find on a vanguard card; which is reflected in the life bonus. So we are going to ignore the ability all together, lets make us of that life total. Seeing as we’ve already had two test of endurance decks, it would be boring to create a new one; Time for something new!
With such a nice, big life total we can afford to spend a little to get what we want; and what we want is Bringers. This deck can drop a bringer on turn one, but the chances of that happening are slim. But you will drop a bringer before turn five, which is pretty much certain with 28 mana sources in this deck. A nice early drop is either the black or blue Bringer, as they will allow you to get through your deck fairly quickly. In fact, all the Bringers have something cool they bring to the deck, guess that’s why they’re called Bringers! (Another poor joke, sorry). But say you have the green Bringer out and you want another one; just hit him with a pack hunt! You now hold all three copies in your hand and if you have the mana base, you can probably drop one of them straight off. Just as a little garnish, I decided to drop the coats into this deck; it just seemed right somehow!
Now that’s the card fecundity wishes it was; card draw for me when my creatures die. And what better way to get them to die then to sacrifice them, why wait on your opponent to get the job started?!
Yes people, it’s a fruity pebbles deck! But this one has a unique twist in the form of Tomorrow; he allows you to overcome the capped drawing system enduring renewal places upon you as he replaces ‘Draw’ with ‘Put into your hand’. To top it off, he allows you to look at the top three cards and choose which one you want! So search out those free drop creatures and kill you opponent in double quick time!
Non-key worded vigilance; there is importance it the difference. But the main point to remember is that our creatures can attack and block every time unless tapped down by an effect such as Nature’s Will or Twiddle. People, here comes another white deck!
The name says it all really, hold the line. With forever vigilant creatures, you can poke at the enemy will keeping yourself safe. The fact you are untapped doesn’t go unrewarded either, with castles and the sword improving your toughness, you should be able to hold most things back. But say you want a little extra punch, just pay three mana to tap the creature equipped with the sword(s) and hey presto! Also as a side note, it is far easier in this deck to flip Bushi than you would be led to believe, trust me.
Well it’s obvious this card favours the defensive player, no two which ways about it really. And what’s more defensive than a wall? Right, not much! But the problem with walls is that they don’t attack, how do you kill an enemy when your creatures don’t attack?
Run; it’s a….wall? Actually, the walls in this deck get big and will eventually pounce across the field at an astonished opponent. And nice little combo is heart of light and wall of glare. You opponent will never get an attack through on land, but should he decide they want to go by air, our friend the sunweb will deal with them. So why do we have a little used spirit from Kamigawa in the deck you ask? Well switch the power and toughness of your walls and watch what happens.
We have pump my friends, we have pump. It seems to me that most of these vanguard cards steer towards the realm of beatdown; which is okay by me! So we want a beatdown deck that takes advantage of inbuilt, instant speed pump ability. Okay then, let’s do this!
Why does this deck benefit from pump? Because you only get to hit every once in a while, so you need to make it count. And if anyone does recognize the deck, it is a hybrid version of a popular deck in standard around the time of Fifth Dawn known as bouncing god. When the deck managed to get all its playing pieces on the field, you had instant board control due to a recycling wrath of god engine. By using Otherworldly journey whilst a witness and Hikari were in play, you made the board clear for a wrath, only to have the wrath returned to you when the witness returned (I love that card!). The problem the deck suffered was that it had to waste two turns to deal four damage, not a good trade-off for a deck in standard at the time. But with our inbuilt pump, that problem is a thing of the past. We'll take another little break here people; don't want to get too ahead of those late comer's now do we? You do, well then I need tea; so come back next time and I'll finish what I started. Till next time people, this is Luthervamplord; signing off. You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Articles
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Pain,
Boros Style! 
Bringers
Cost Life. 
